The Stray Children of Light and Sorrow
by Perenelle Windsor
Summary: - Crossover - Simultaneous near death experiences allow for shadows to come to center stage and a fell wind to follow in their wake.
1. Lifeblood of the Valorous

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_Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today._

_**The Stray Children of Light and Sorrow**_

Written By:

Perenelle Windsor

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Act I:

Lifeblood of the Valorous

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Scene I:

Water

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Hot blood comingled with sweat on the marble ground of Bern's Water Temple. The sound of smashing steel and frenzied screams echoed in the half-aquatic battlefield, and rebounded from the high vault of the ceiling so that a man could hear every dying scream made in the arcane sanctuary. Corpses, all with the same insignia of black and red stitched upon the breast of their uniforms, lay scattered on the ground and some face-down in the water that, long ago, had gone dark with blood.

Any Bernese man worth his life would have recognized the emblem on the bodies - the stigmata of the once benevolent Black Fang, now gone down the dark road having betrayed the common men they had served. It would be doubtful, though, that any common man would know the name of the woman who led the assassin's guild into battle that December dawn – a golden-eyed witch who very well may have been a demon, Madame Sonia Reed.

The sort of tactics employed by the opposition were one of the most basic (yet effective) battle plans used by Lycian generals of old, yet the Fang's antagonist was by no means a proper army. It was the sort where the tactician was a young man of barely twenty-five, and far older than the generals he commanded, and the sort where Etrurian nobility put their lives on the line for a Sacaen mercenary (though, be not mistaken, it was not the utopian organization those words might have implied).

The head of the campaign against the Bernese devil-goddess was barely an adult at seventeen, but of noble blood and vitality, and had fought well beside any soldier regardless of stature. He was the sole child of Marquess Pherae, and the only heir to that post in light of Lord Elbert's recent death. As he surveyed the battlefield with disgust in his languid blue eyes, he steadied the grip on his rapier. The sounds around him were dulled, slightly, by the pounding of blood in his ears.

From where he stood, upon one of the magically-sustained passageways that threatened to disappear at any moment, Eliwood would wager that it was the Pherean army (though he was reluctant to call it such, considering they held more loyalty to him than to his father's fiefdom) who would emerge from the carnage as victor. He could see two swordsmen - one Sacaen by the long viridian braid, and the other a monster by the way he cleaved a Wo Dao through a man's skull - carving a path through the men (who were excellent soldiers, but probably poor assassins) that served under the Reed family. The panicked, echoing prayers of Anima and Holy magic that echoed revealed that Lady Priscilla was still intent on fulfilling her task of making sure not a single ally of hers perished.

Closer towards him, the Heiress of House Caelin was gnashing her teeth together as she swung her faithful sword through the neck of one man and side stepping the gush of hot blood and bone fragments that threatened to spill over her. With reserve that could only come from a childhood of constant vigilance, which one needed in Sacae, Lyn looked away from the young man she had killed tactlessly and wiped blood off of one of her homeland's most treasured artifacts.

They, the army that was, were several hours deep in the swamp of a battle. The Sacaen woman, though, (although she was of equally Lycian blood, Lyn preferred to think of herself as purely Sacaen, for a number of good reasons) was not very badly injured. There was a cut in her side from an arrowhead and a gash on her arm from horseman's lance, both adding blood to the already slick floor. They weren't wounds that terribly concerned Lyn, however. She had, after all, suffered far worse in this war, and recovered from them all by the blessings of Mother Earth and Father Sky.

She stepped over bodies of assassins that had met with the steel of her blade, or the metal of many other's weapons (sometimes even their own allies, if they thought the death would be more merciful). She surveyed the familiar world around her, although Lyn had never before been inside of the Water Temple. Battle was a thing that was becoming second-nature to her, as it did to any soldier, no matter if they wanted to or not.

Her bluish eyes found Eliwood standing knee-deep in bodies, some cut down by his own sword and many by others. He was statue-still, and had he been lying on the ground, Lyn might have mistaken him for a corpse. However, she saw his blue eyes were darting frantically around the battlefield like a mouse trapped in a cage, or a hawk hunting for its prey. It seemed out of character for him to be so vigilant.

"It's almost over, isn't it?" she asked of the redhead lord, sounding as friendly as her adrenaline-fueled body would allow. Her words pulled him from his pensive stupor and, quick as a striking bird of prey, he raised his rapier defensively with a mask of grim determination. Upon realizing it was her, Eliwood eased some strain off of his grip, but did not relax it. He was within safe company, but no safe environment. Lyn would have thought him a fool if he had relaxed his hand completely.

"Depends," he answered back, looking to the still-locked doors of Sonia's throne room. His voice was an odd mix of weariness and energy, a man sleepy and yet at the same time knowing that sleepiness would be his killer, "There's a vanguard of Wyvern Riders guarding that room, and they won't go down too easy, never mind the amount of magicians, and these accursed bridges vanishing and reappearing all the time."

Almost as if on cue, there was a collection of horrible screams from the northern portion of the temple as at least a half dozen splashes of men and women plunged to their watery graves. It put a bitter taste to Eliwood's mouth and a dark scowl in his eyes when he knew that Sonia did not care a single bit about any human who died today.

Lyn nodded in bleak agreement. Her lips had parted to give another reply that hung half-formed in her mouth, but silenced as a deep voice bellowed out; "_Duck and cover milady_!"

Neither had much time to comprehend their actions and, had war not made them quick and twitchy, the two members of Lycian nobility might not have made it. A barrage of lightning, white as alabaster, shot by a mage alone on isolated tiles had missed the Sacaen noblewoman by the skin of her teeth before disappearing into the indigo tiles, leaving nothing but a coal-black scar to mark its existence.

The unnatural lightning did manage to slice a slit of electrical burns down her leg that smoked, the gray tendrils stinking of cooked flesh that drew bile up into Eliwood's throat along with the meager contents of his stomach. Lyn hissed curses nastily, using a few phrases that were obviously only vulgar on the plains and Eliwood grabbed her shoulder so she could bend to the left to check the extent of the injury. It would scar, and it would render her limp until it was healed, but it was nothing that invoked more than a few tears and a few choice words.

"Lady Lyndis, are you alright?!"

Copper-haired Kent, who had yelled the warning to Lyn, appeared now behind them, with his hose's eyes wide and terrified from the sounds of battle. The same look lingered behind a film of cold bravery in his own eyes, and his brow slick with sweat and blood from a slim cut at his hairline. She nodded without looking at him, and grabbed a vial of vulnerary at her belt so she could spill the elixir down her leg. The skin mended in seconds, leaving only a single brown and white scar that would remain for a few days. Elixirs and their lesser cousins were marvelous little creations of magic, but they weren't miracles in bottles.

"Get that mage killed," she hissed to the Crimson Shield, who nodded without question, "And where, in the name of all that is good and holy, is Mark?

"Further back, with Nino and Jaffar," Kent told her almost before Lyn had finished speaking. Eliwood turned to him with an eyebrow raised. Nino was young, but she was a good fighter, and Jaffar needed little explanation. Before the Pherean could voice his question, Kent explained in the same jerky-quick manner, "Nino's unconscious; the injury is nothing serious, but somebody is going to have to look at her after this is over."

"So we're without a tactician for now," Eliwood said dejectedly, and grimly Kent nodded. The flame of hope that had begun to grow inside of him, the same little bit of hope that sparkled during every battle when they were winning, died down. Mark was vital to their success and morale, perhaps _too _vital, as the world had not yet tested Eliwood and his fellow "generals" (although they had never been named such) with the task of completing a battle without their tactician's aide.

Regarding the other generals, Eliwood knew that Hector was alongside Florina and her sisters with the northern battles, and turned back to see where Lyn was. The Caelin Lady left the two of them without a word (not an uncommon practice for her), moving quickly up the tile bridge towards where the mage that had attacked Lyn stood. She slid a little in the blood and water pooling on the ground, but it hampered her not as she pulled her bow and a goose-feather arrow from the quiver slapped against her back.

From where he stood, Eliwood could spy the lone mage on the tiled isle running a finger down the pages of his tome as he prepared to cast his spell again. He looked up from his tome just in time to see Lyndis positioning herself tentatively on the edge of one of the bridges, taking careful aim with her bow. The shot was clean, and pierced directly through his throat. With no enjoyment on his behalf, Eliwood watched as the mage went milk pale as another arrow rendered his lung to fleshy ribbons. In a crumbling arc, the mage twirled and landed in the blood-poisoned water of the ancient aqueducts, silencing his magic forever and sparing one of Eliwood's and Lyn's soldiers a horrible death by electrocution.

Turning his attention away from Lyn's latest kill, Eliwood carefully stepped over two corpses of a Pegasus Knight and her mount. His foot, however, disturbed the girl's corpse and turned her face upward towards him. A long, bloody slash across her throat had been the cause of death, which had made her skin turn gray and eyes white. He winced as he saw the panic imprinted on the girl's face, lingering even after her soul had gone to Elimine's Paradise. He might not mind (although that was miserably poor phrasing, considering he _did _mind greatly) cutting down the brigades when they were after his throat, but he didn't prefer seeing the fear on their faces or in their filmy eyes.

The battlefield was no place for sentiments, however, and he had to remind himself of that fact.

"My lord!" called Marcus's familiar voice, sounding unusually audible over the clamor of the fighting. Eliwood looked to see the loyal Pherean general (who actually deserved the title, unlike Eliwood who had unofficially been labeled such) before him with a noticeable wheeze in his breath. Isadora and Harken were by his side, faces expressionless or unreadable, and Lowen soon behind the other Knights of the Realm. Marcus looked down at his liege with something that was probably concern. "Perhaps you should fall back a bit; we can handle the remainders. There is no need for you to further risk your life."

"Not with the Wyverns up there," Eliwood told the general, watching as Marcus's eyebrows knotted together, as they always did when he was displeased, "We need to wait for Lord Pent and Lady Louise before charging; they can get the Riders out of the sky, at least, and buy us some time." Eliwood would be the first to admit he was no tactical genius, but the plan was simple and made enough sense that Marcus gave a half-nod in agreement.

"Where are those other archers, Wil and Rebecca?" asked Isadora calmly, nearly placidly, "They would be able to bring down the guard if they took flight, and if we could bring them up, we would avoid having to risk the lives of the Count and the Countess." It was second nature for knights to put the lives and safety of nobility over everything else. However, both Etrurians would have been insulted at the 'doubt' of their security in battle, when they had given ample proof they could fight as good as any knight or soldier.

There were heavy footfalls behind Eliwood, and he gripped tightly on his sword. Lyn had the unfortunate habit of not announcing when she had arrived, perhaps because it wasted too much time, and it had caused a number of scares throughout the half-year they had been fighting.

"Reinforcements appeared near the entrance," Lyn explained, relaying what Kent had told her moments ago, "And there are enough of them to keep them both busy for too long. There's enough of a guard there, with both Wil and Rebecca and Raven, so we needn't worry." Still, Marcus muttered darkly under his breath.

"Um, shouldn't we get to the throne room as fast as we can?" Lowen interjected, his breathing a harsh wheeze that did not seriously hamper his speech. He went scarlet when everyone turned their eyes upon his half-obscured face, "I mean, everyone's getting worn from all the fighting, and we need as much strength as possible to bring the soldiers . . ."

Marcus's look turned into a dark scowl that silenced Lowen immediately, and his words were harsher than needed when he barked, "And if we move too quickly, the soldiers will make a mistake and we will end up with more casualties than the army can afford. Do you want Lord Eliwood or Lady Lyndis to perish because you rushed your attack!? How would you explain it to Lady Eleanora!"

"That's enough," Eliwood said, and Marcus fell quiet instantly, waiting for orders that Eliwood did not give (mostly because he couldn't come up with coherent orders over the sounds of the echoing battle). Luckily, the Sacaen noblewoman filled the gap in commanding that he had left. Lyn shook her head, most likely to clear it momentarily, and said calmly, "We need to gather as many troops as we can to the throne room. Then, we'll ambush the riders and Sonia. It's the same plan we used against Ursula, in the Manse. What do you think, Eliwood?"

He inhaled to clear his mind and to think – a hard task made difficult by his headache. When he finally spoke, it was slow, more a list of priorities than any sort of plan, but together it formed something that greatly resembled a plan.

"We need to deal with the Riders first, before they come after us. Archers or sorcerers need to be over here . . . Marcus, Isadora, get Lady Louise over here so she can cripple or kill their mounts. Lord Pent could kill the riders quickly afterwards. After that . . . get everybody here you can possibly get and secure the area before we go after Sonia herself."

Both knights were obviously uneager to risk injuring or killing Louise and Pent, and Eliwood was only too familiar with the risks. If the Mage General of Etruria were to fall under the command of a Lycian when there was no military alliance between the two nations, Etruria would have every right to claim retribution for Pent's death, and retribution always seemed to take the form of war.

Yet, neither said a word of disagreement. Isadora saluted and Marcus bowed his head in acknowledgement. The two, along with silent Harken and still-scarlet Lowen, were off immediately afterwards, disappearing into the sea of battle surrounding them all. Eliwood watched them leave uneasily, hoping he had not damned anybody to an early grave. The plan was identical to several others they had used throughout the course of the war, plans that Eliwood knew had proved successful. Despite the growing security in his mind, however, every muscle and joint in his body screamed for rest. Hopefully, soon this would be over, and they could rest easy for a night - a single night of peace, without fear of ambush or death . . .

"Oh by all that is good and glorious . . . by Mother Earth and Father Sky, _no_," he heard Lyn swear next to him, her voice nearly feverish with horror.

He turned to look at her with his heart hammering in his chest, and found that her once-composed eyes were wide and glistening with something that could only be described as instinctual fear. He followed her gaze with his own eyes narrowing with panic. On another one of the islands suspended by magic stood a bishop, who the Pherean army had left be for the man had lacked a weapon and a threat, maybe even because he was a clergyman.

Now, however, the innocent-looking staff clamped in his hands glittered with a bloody vermilion that shone like a beacon through the stagnant air of the battlefield. Eliwood himself had never been unfortunate enough to see the sort of magic before, but he recognized it instantly from descriptions that Mark and Hector had ominously given him after the battle against Marquess Laus in the Dragon's Gate. It was the sort of godforsaken art that the Church of Elimine forbade, one which eroded a man's consciousness and replaced it with a single, animalistic desire to kill.

An uncountable amount of swear words passed the Eliwood's lips as he vigorously cast his eyes around furiously for who would be the unfortunate one to become bewitched. A numb state had overtaken him instead of panic. He had to find the poor bastard who had fallen under the sway of the bishop's whim, to either kill or incapacitate the soldier (depending on whose colors they flew).

Eliwood had barely turned around on his heels before the blood in his veins froze. His composed face had gone pallid the instant he felt warm, blood-soaked silver pressed itself against his throat. He changed a look to the side, and miserably caught sight of Lyn's face.

Her eyes had gone blank and glossy, her face twisted into half a snarl and half a listless expression - like the remaining emotion on the face of a corpse. The holy Mani Katti was poised to decapitate him in an instant. If he failed to move soon, he'd be dead – by the hand of a woman he called friend, when any and all sanity in her had gone away.

Instantly, Eliwood raised his rapier and ducked. His blade clanged against the quick swing of the Sacaen katana. Lyn rebounded on her heels, staggering backwards, but her expression never changed.

"Lyn!" he yelled at her, sidestepping her wild swings with the Mani Katti. Her swift, precise attacks were gone, replaced with a far more barbaric sort of swordsmanship that greatly resembled the mad swipes of a bear. Eliwood had no idea how to snap her out of the bewitched state the bishop's staff had wrought upon her, and he had no desire to attack her (with the way she fought now, he doubted he could have landed a blow without being sliced in half himself). The only option left to him, then, was to shout, "Lyn, get a hold of yourself!" and other such commands repeatedly.

The horrible demon controlling Lyn kicked her leg across the floor in a low arc, knocking Eliwood off his feet. His rapier slipped from his fingers, landing vertically beside him, and his head collided with the indigo tiles, almost able to fall into the water and become lost forever. White dots twinkled like stars in front of his vision and he felt a trickle of warm blood slide down the back of his neck.

Before his mind had fully returned, he rolled out of the way just in time to avoid being impaled in the heart by the Mani Katti. Eliwood grabbed his fallen rapier, pulling it easily out of the ground where it had fallen, and jumped to his feet just in time to barely block a swing from the languidly smirking Lyn. The lack of a good hold on his sword sent pain echoing through his wrists and arms, and his grip trembled dangerously.

With his teeth tightly clenched and his hands gripped on the sword's hilt so hard that the metal was sinking into his palms, Eliwood backed up, parrying Lyn's strikes as best he could. His boots slipped in the blood on the tiles, and many times he came close to tripping over a corpse and becoming one himself. He shot a fevered glare through the surrounding area, swearing under his breath for sending Marcus and Isadora away so quickly. Either one of them could help keep Lyn at bay until the spell wore off (he forced himself not to add _if it wore off_ after his thought).

However, it was simply Eliwood against blood-hungry Lyn, and it was obvious who would win the battle. He cast a single eye around for anybody within reasonable distance who could lend him aide, but none of his soldiers looked like they could come any time soon.

Several of the mercenary soldiers looked like they needed desperate aide themselves, be it a healer or a fellow fighter. With Sonia's rear platoon of fighters, Lord Erk's hold on his tome was slick with blood from a massive gash in his arm, a similar one on his leg, and he was holding back a yell of pain as he tried to avoid the swings of a pirate's axe and cast magic simultaneously. Canas of Badon, even further from Eliwood and just barely in his line of vision, was trying to blink hot crimson out of his eyes and spit the ichor from his mouth, his skin pale enough to merit a loss of a good amount from both a head wound and a slash across his chest.

Frantically, Eliwood tore his eyes from the world around him, and cast them upon the ebon water surrounding the thin bridge he and Lyn fought on. The canal was deep, too deep for him to imagine in his haste, but the sight of the water brought a half-formed idea to his head that made sense. Perhaps the shock from the water would be enough to snap Lyn out of her bewitchment, without harming either of them?

He dodged another swing of the Mani Katti, which still cut a sliver of a wound on his cheek, and threw all his weight against Lyndis. A monotonous cry that was pure reflex passed her lips as she stumbled backwards, tripping over a corpse and crushing his nose and jaw. Before her body hit the water, she grabbed the hem of Eliwood's cape and wrapped her knuckles with it. His balance gone in an instant, he fell with her, his rapier leaving his hand just before the sick concoction of icy water and hot blood hit him like cobblestone and flooded into his mouth and lungs.

In the distorted world under the violet-hued water, Lyn kicked him in the chest (he was not sure if was an accident or on purpose and supposed he'd never know) as she fought her way to the heavenly air above the canal. The wind knocked from his lungs, Eliwood opened his mouth in an unwilling gasp and swallowed a great deal of water. The heavy taste of blood in the water made him gag, halting his frantic (and futile, considering he didn't know how to swim) dash towards the surface. His mind reeled, far too quickly and nauseatingly than he would have liked, and barely coherent thoughts fluttered in his mind as it shut down.

_I can't die yet . . ._

The words repeated in his mind like a mantra. Anything else would have proven a waste of energy. He forced his weak and fading mind to listen to the repetition again and again as he kicked to get to the surface. He had never had a proper swimming lesson in his life, considering the biggest body of water in all of Pherae had been the puddles that appeared with April showers, so all he could go on was what he'd just seen Lyn do moments ago. His armor and exhaustion, however, worked against him and kept him far below the surface, starving his mind and lungs as he sank deeper.

The lights above were flickering away, and sheer panic was starting to overtake him. After a long, vain period of clawing through the water as if it were rock, and thus achieving no result whatsoever, Eliwood's body refused to work. Even as he begged his legs to kick, his mind screaming that he was dying, they hung listlessly beneath him, the muscles too tired to obey. Eliwood's mind began to slip into the cold grasp of unconsciousness, even as he tried with all his might to keep water from flooding into his lungs. With no way to cough the element from his lungs, he was choking – dying – on it.

His world was fading into a soft gray color, punctuated with the transparent indigo-blue of the water, and the dissipating lights from above creating fantastic patterns in the water. Languidly, his eyes blinked and played cruel tricks on his dying mind. Vaguely, he wondered if he could see somebody leering down upon him, unending him as he floated in the water, and - if he focused with some ill-spent energy - he could make out some features of the phantasmal onlooker.

A mocking figure, garbed in blue, a cruel smile of either hope or hatred on their face, stared down at him. Slowly, the mouth (or mouth-like shape) opened and moved up and down, although Eliwood didn't catch a word. What was it they had said, he wondered absently as the water's darkness overtook his world?

Had they said '_You shall not die_'. . .?

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Scene II:

Fire

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The vast majority of the Renaitian countryside was composed of thick forests, old as the tales of the Sacred Stones themselves. Most of the woods consisted of oaks and elms, several hands thick and at least five men tall, so that the entire Brynhildr's Woods smelt of sap and bark in a strangely rustic aroma. Little fragments of dying summer sunshine (which heralded an oncoming storm) barely passed through the canopy of viridian leaves to touch the ground below, and illuminate the large group that attempted to cross through the woods.

It was too dangerous, in their position as insurgents to the reign of the pseudo-King Orson, to travel by the main road, and it had been an agreement amidst the army's Generals (which seemed to change hands between Seth and Duessel, properly knighted generals, Innes of Frelia and Ephraim of Renais) that it would be better to travel under the security of the tree's shadows. Unfortunately, most of the half-mercenary, half-militant company rode on horseback, and travel off the main road proved almost impossibly cumbersome with a company such as Renais's only real, formal army (which, ironically, was a hodgepodge of royalty, soldiers, and mercenaries).

One of the heirs apparent to the throne of Renais – Prince Ephraim, son of the late King Fado II – cast an angry scowl about the Brynhildr's Woods, trying to locate a safe path through the trees that wouldn't take hours to cross. They had been traveling on this set path for the greater part of two days, and Ephraim would have been greatly surprised if they had traveled more than ten miles. If there was a single, clear passage - just one route that gapped through the impassable trees - they could enter the capital city within a day or two and possibly reclaim it within a roughly short time frame. Everybody knew that taking Merchant Road was suicide, guarded by either remnants of the Grad army or bandits who thrived in the anarchy created by Fado's assassination.

But if they could just _get to the main city_, they could liberate the country, a free Renais would be within their grasp . . . although Ephraim was vaguely disturbed by his own thinking like a conqueror, when in regards to his native land.

"Kyle," Ephraim asked suddenly, turning to the knight who rode to his left. The summons also served as a good distraction to get Ephraim out of his pensive, and rather depressing, thoughts. The emerald-haired knight sat bolt upright, a foil to the half-asleep Forde. It was remarkable (and slightly eerie) how much Kyle resembled Seth in his stance, "Do you happen to remember a path out of these woods, by any chance?"

Kyle paused for a moment, than shook his head quickly. "No milord. I believe the General has a map with him, however."

"A map won't show which roads are thick with trees," said Ephraim with a small, half-concealed sigh. He craned his head to try in vain to see through the heavy trunks of the oaks, but all he succeeded in doing was cracking his aching neck. Hours of remaining in the same position did poorly on his body as a whole, but he had always suffered from a rather stiff neck.

With another sigh that seemed to be becoming a habit of his, he pulled his horse to a stop and dismounted. His guard, really only consisting of Kyle and Forde, halted as well, though Forde only stopped because his partner had pulled his horse to a stop as well. Ephraim preferred walking on foot to mounted, as well as fighting. When it was your own two feet planted on the ground, movements had more control, and attacks had a greater chance of hitting than when you had to rely on controlling a horse. Also, it allowed him a chance to find an actual path through Brynhildr that didn't lose them days of needed traveling, or fighting.

The twigs and fallen branches in the underbrush crunched under his boots softly. Ephraim had to admit was a pleasant change from the other crunching noises he had heard recently. He turned around to speak with Kyle again, only to spot a lithe, teal-haired woman riding up on her own horse behind both the knights, gripping a rapier's hilt loosely, just as a precaution. Her blue eyes – so very much like his own, except softer and sadder – were looking at Ephraim's sudden stop in general curiosity, though her face did not mimic the expression. Eirika's face had never really been expressive except when greatly emotional, but Ephraim was always able to tell what ran through her head by the way her eyes reacted. Anybody with enough contact with her probably could pick up the trick, he reasoned.

"I'm going to scout ahead," he told Kyle, and indirectly Eirika, "You and Forde take left and try and find a clearer route. If you find anything, send Neimi or Colm to come and get me. She's fast with a horse through woods, right?" Forde was the one who nodded, fighting back a yawn.

"I'll go with you," Eirika said before anybody gave her an objection. Most of her words were obscured by the very large yawn that Forde let escape, perhaps hoping that the princess's words would be able to disguise it (they didn't, however). Eirika remained mounted upon her mare, however, and there probably would be little problem. Kenny, the pretty chestnut mare that she had acquired from Jehanna as a gift from the hastily crowned Tempest King, was light on her feet from training to cross heavy sands, and could probably fit through trees well enough. She looked at her brother, the curiosity creeping into her set face, and asked, "Should the rest of the army make camp while we're searching?"

Ephraim shook his head, but took the reins of his horse and tying them tight to a low tree branch. As he did, a faint trickle of sunlight that had managed to find a way through the foliage sent a bright shimmer across the golden surface of his bracelet, blinding him for no more than a second. Ephraim still found it very hard to believe that the bracelet – the trinket he'd worn since he was no more than ten – was a key to the true Renaitian Sacred Stone. Ephraim blinked to clear his eyes of the glitter from the Solar Brace.

"No, but tell Seth to have them rest while we find a path," he told to Eirika, who nodded and turned to go find her faithful retainer. Ephraim drew Reginleif from its holster on his horse's saddle, fondly feeling the familiar scars and indents that the wood held. Several had been made even before the invasion of Renais, from sparring with Eirika and the knights when Ephraim had been younger, in the days of yore that had only become a pleasant memory of his childhood. The lance itself had been given to him by General Duessel who, laughingly, had said that young Ephraim would have made a better mercenary than a prince. Ephraim wholeheartedly agreed with the aging Grad.

Not long after Eirika had first set off to find Seth, she returned with a faint scowl and followed by the Silver Knight of Renais. The scarlet-haired general, although he was barely thirty, was holding onto the hilt of his sword firmly, and Ephraim didn't need to ask to know that Seth was going to accompany him and Eirika. He had heard, from his sister one miserable evening that ended a miserable day not too long ago, that the last words Eirika had heard their father say had charged Seth with protecting her, and knew that the knight would never let that slip far from his mind.

He'd go with Eirika to the bowels of hell, and Ephraim was grateful for that loyal presence when few other anchors remained. Eirika, however, seemed not as eager to be followed on a simple scouting mission, and her brother smiled slightly at her less-than-subtle distain.

With Ephraim leading both she and Seth through the thick undergrowth of the forest, Eirika inhaled deeply the sharp, pleasantly warm air to steady her tired body. The wet, earthy aroma lingered for a long time in her nose, bringing with is a smile and faint nostalgia from her childhood. Unfortunately, the pleasant feeling passed quickly and she was left with the omnipresent feeling of exhaustion. She had not slept well for a long, long time, not since the twin's reunion in the hellish sands of Jehanna, and certainly not since her brother had told her of his travels, of Vigarde's second death, and of Lyon. That particular topic was what kept Eirika up at nights, milling over thoughts and memories with confusion in all of them. The few times she had seen the Grad Prince, in the whole of this war, he had mostly appeared to be the same frail young man she knew from childhood, if not more enigmatic and (though she did not like to admit it) disturbed. Yet, Ephraim had told her of a cruel, perhaps demonic psychopath in the place of their dear childhood friend - the boy who couldn't have hurt a fly, even in the worst of rages!

Why the difference now, in both his behavior and the twin's accounts? Eirika trusted her brother – trusted him with her life, as was evident in several of the battles – and believed he would not dare make up a tale like this. However, she could not believe the reality of the story, not until Eirika saw it with her own two eyes.

She inhaled deeply once again, savoring the faint taste of the fresh, clean air and tree sap on her tongue. For once, her senses were not clogged with the smells of war - blood, steel, flesh - and she could taste what was natural and good with the world. Eirika smiled to herself. How she had missed this smell, especially since they had just come from the wasteland of Jehanna where the only smell had been sand. Her expression caught the sharp eye of her guardian, who turned quickly to his lady with a fine mix of concern and control on his face (his most common expression, as Eirika had taken note of over the past few months).

"Princess, is something troubling you?" Seth asked of her sharply, though not coldly. His words had a way of sounding like orders and a simple inquiry at the same time, and it was a trick that he and he alone seemed able to pull off. Ephraim looked over his shoulder at her, overgrown teal hair framing a face that could've been Eirika's, except with a squarer chin and longer nose.

"Just weary from travel," she said, speaking only a half-lie to them, "It's been too long since I've had a proper sleep and it's taking an unfortunate toll. I'm just eager to get back to the capital, that's all, nothing to concern yourself with." She smiled placidly, which did not appear to fool either of them.

"We all are," Ephraim said, resisting both the urge to run his fingers through his mattered hair and to give another sigh that was increasingly bothersome, "Just as we're all eager to see this war end. The end can't come for a while, though, not with the Sacred Stones in such danger and Renais in . . . Orson's hands," (the expression in his eyes was uncharacteristically furious), "We'll just need some patience, just a bit more until we retake the capital." Seth gave something of a half-nod, and Eirika's mood sank further.

"At least when the castle's reclaimed, we can rest," she said in faux optimism, though the greater part of her did not believe her own words. Neither, it seemed, did Seth or Ephraim, though both chose the wrong path and decided to humor her.

"For a while, at best," said Seth, his eyes relaying the opposite and that was what Eirika began to frown about, "Though it would be unwise to stay too long if we want to reach Darkling Woods before Rausten's fleet ceases travel for the holy season. We'll have to head to Rausten to overtake Prince Lyon." There was a sense of something in the knight's words - an emotion that Eirika couldn't exactly place, except that it was bitter.

"We can afford a week or two of rest at Renais," Ephraim said, but avoided Eirika's face and gripped his lance tighter. The unspoken words _'if we live through the battle' _hung heavily in the air, and tainted Eirika's next breath of air. Ephraim inhaled sharply before continuing to talk, "It's a long march to Rausten and we need the time to find a steward to the throne, for a while until one of us can take charge."

It struck him, then, exactly _how _they were to go about naming a reagent. Renais had been ruled by a member of the royal family for as long as anybody could remember - not a single exception could be brought to the prince's mind, although it had been his sister who had taken to books and history in their youth. There was no procedure to follow, and if there was it was buried in scripture they had no time to read, and that left two options for who was to occupy the throne of the legendary paladin who founded Renais; Ephraim, or Eirika.

To distract himself, Ephraim turned to look around the heavy undergrowth of Brynhildr for any sight of a clear road the company could travel down. A seemingly eternal horizon of repeating trees and shrubs and broken trunks spilled around them, occasionally catching his foot and making him stumble for half a second. Not even a worn traveler's path could be visible, and long ago they had lost sight of Merchant's Road, which Ephraim now wondered about the logic of. The road gave them the clearest route to the capital, and - despite every risk to their lives and well being that accompanied taking Merchant's Road - he was beginning to think it would be better to take it than struggle through the forest another moment.

He stopped sharply, veins filling with adrenaline when Eirika asked uneasily to them, with a hitch of fear in her words, "Do you smell smoke?"

Ephraim inhaled a deep breath full of the thick scent of the trees and foliage, and gripped Reginleif so tightly the knuckles under his gloves were white with fear. There, a faint scent under that of the trees, was the unforgettable aroma of smoke; growing stronger as he stood there. The more he inhaled, the more the smell became familiar until he recalled it entirely with a ferocious swear that no member of society above a pirate should know.

Sulfur, the sort that was mixed with smoke and ash, only came from three places in the world - volcanoes, the gunpowder used to fire ballistae, and fire summoned by mages. As the nearest volcano was in Rausten and ballistae wouldn't have had a chance to burn their powder before the loud mechanics gave away their position, the only thing it could be was a sorcerer - who could set all of Brynhildr ablaze.

"Enemy soldiers are nearby!" shouted Seth as he grabbed his lance and drew it without a sound, "Princess, milord, go join back with the rest of the army before the trees are set aflame!"

"How can you tell?" Eirika asked, ignoring his orders entirely. Just as he opened his mouth to repeat his command, there was the sound of snapping wood in the near distance, so faint that if they had not fallen utterly silent, Ephraim would have certainly missed it. He turned towards what was the most likely direction the sound had come from, his teeth gnashed and his hands tightly gripped on Reginleif's battle-worn shaft.

His eyes were narrowed as they quickly scanned around the bushes and trees for anything that resembled a man with a mage's hat and tome. A flicker of color - a steel gray against the background of green and brown - was all that the Renaitian Prince needed to charge through the thick underbrush, leaving both Seth and Eirika to hurry after him, both not nearly as fleet on horses as he was on foot. He heard, in the back of his mind, Eirika give a very unlady-like swear as Kenny passed a tree that smashed a branch into his sister's face.

It didn't take too long at all for him to come upon a small man was crouched in the ground, decked in a Grado soldier's gray and dark blue. His fingers were flickering through the thick parchment pages of an Anima tome and his whisper-quiet and gravelly voice was chanting a quick incarnation that Ephraim instantly recognized. He tipped the point of Reginleif under the mage's head delicately, ready to sink the steel into the man's throat with barely a twitch of his wrist. There was no fear in the mage's eyes, only an arrogant defiance.

"Who is your commander?" Ephraim demanded of the man, "Are there anymore of you in the woods?" Reginleif pushed harder.

As a response, the mage gave a wry, sadistic smile, revealing a mouthful of rotting teeth, and finished his incarnation. Too late did Ephraim's lance impale itself through the man's throat, and he swore at his delayed movements. "Glory to the Grado Empire," the mage sputtered in a bloody wheeze as his eyes turned pale with death, and the brush around Ephraim burst into a ring of flame.

As Brynhildr went up in a cloud of crackling fire, Ephraim backed up and looked around the enclosure he had found himself within. The Elfire spell had hit directly onto a dying tree, which spared no moments in falling and blocking off Ephraim from the route to his army, and spreading fast across the scattered leaves and undergrowth. With a dying man's panic in his eyes and thoughts, clouding his logical judgment (quite a feat indeed, considering this was the same man who stood brave when viciously outnumbered in Renvall), he ran as the fire overtook him and burned a barricade. The only coherent thing that pounded through his skull was the vicious question a voice in the back of his mind spat; _How careless can you be!_?

That mage had probably tried to lure either him or Eirika (or possibly any member of their company, considering the direct heirs to the Frelian, Jehannan, and Raus thrones were amongst their army's ranks) to kill them, and Ephraim had walked right into the trap. The sanctuary the man had found was the driest spot in all of Brynhildr's Woods, and the only spot that would erupt into a giant cloud of sulfurous fire. Elfire was a spell that only a few of the most highly trained soldiers, previously under the command of General Flourspar, could master, so this man had been no idiot. Ephraim had been duped, as would any man, but rationalizations were a thing of the past. He was trapped inside the circle of fire, unsure of whether or not he'd die a painful death by fire or by suffocating on the clouds of smoke. Which was the worst death, he didn't want to consider.

The orange-red blaze was coming in closer, further destroying anything that resembled an escape route, with flames writhing and twisting as they cracked in the air. Sweat, from both fear and the heat, comingled and blurred his vision as he searched, a pure, instinctual fear filling his heart as fast as the smoke was filling his lungs. Even trying to hold his breath, streams of the smoke found their way into his body, bringing horrible coughs up to his mouth. He had to press the back his hand to his mouth as his body tried to force the ash out of his lungs to no avail.

His mind was starving for oxygen as he stepped back from the approaching fire, and his eyes flickered too frantically around to find a path. Even through his fear, he could tell what his final thoughts were, as they were the thoughts that crossed the warrior-prince's mind at that very moment. Was this how he was going to die? Burned alive, unable to do a damn thing to save his skin, trapped like a useless rat instead of the fighter everyone said he was?

"Siegfried and Latona _damnit_!" he swore out loud, words that might be his last. The outburst had been a pitiful mistake, as smoke swept itself up into his lungs and made his vision swim to a sea of brown trees and vivid orange fire. He felt panic fill his heart more acutely then he had ever felt it before as he collapsed to his knees, Reginleif (which he's forgotten was still in his hands, having been wrenched from the mage's neck on reflex) slipping from his fingers as he coughed a wheezy heave. Maybe blood was on his tongue from the severity of his coughs, but he really couldn't tell.

Ephraim stumbled back to his feet, keeping the palm of one hand over his mouth and nose. His watering eyes scanned the ring of fire for any sort of escape, even one that would end up in him getting scorched with blistering burns. No, his only escape route was to risk running through a blaze that would only grant him a slow, agonizing death. A tree collapsed in front of him, smattering bits of charred wood up in his face that stung like high heaven. He walked backwards as fast as he could. At least behind him, the flames were lesser, and Ephraim could at least postpone the inevitable – for the moment at least – and give his mind some time to formulate a hope –

His foot hit a tree root, the heel of his boot pulling him down even as he grabbed at the air for support. Ephraim fell backwards into the spreading wildfire, and for a moment felt no pain.

The fire licked his skin and, when the pain finally came to him, he could not help but let out a scream of pain. This was _agony_.

He clawed at his throat for what held his cape in place, one hand attempting to find ground to prop himself up on and only finding more fire. He screamed again, his eyes shut tight as his body continued to hopelessly find some means of escaping the pain.

In his mind, with the snide voice in the back of his thoughts confirming such, the only consolation was soon, the pain would leave him, and soon he would be of any and all earthly pain. However, Ephraim was a damn better man to accept death peacefully and finally managed to push himself up. He shook where he stood as the fire bit deep into his skin. His hands clawed up the burning trunk of a tree, so he could die on his feet.

Despite his final actions, he wondered how soon his obvious fate would arrive upon him - seconds, minutes, hours – days later as he lay covered in burns?

Even as he fought to die on his feet, his knees buckled and he fell back onto the flaming ground. The pain was beginning to go away, which - despite relief - he knew wasn't a good thing. His mind threw him reminders of the earthly world, perhaps easing him for death (which brought a different sort of panic to his chest).

He saw his mother's face, as he remembered it from childhood, his father's deep voice, a holiday in Frelia where he had first met Tana and Innes, long lessons in Grado both with books and weapons, Lyon before the war, Eirika crying as over the death of their childhood pet when both had been too young to understand death, and again as a young woman relaying the tale of Fado's murder by Valter's hands. Eirika, who had now lost everything and everyone she cared about, who would have to go on to kill a previously loyal knight and her dearest childhood friend, alone.

"Forgive me, Eirika," he meant to speak, but didn't quite know if he had said those words.

Ephraim opened his eyes blindly, trying in vain to get one last picture of the Renaitian sky before he died. He knew he'd be dead in a matter of seconds with the way his mind faded in and out of consciousness, and he knew he'd be dying when Renais was in the hands of a psychopathic traitor, but he'd at least be dying in his own country having fought so very hard to return back. He strained his eyes as best he could to see beyond the fire, up at the sky.

He saw, instead a single person standing above him, and watching him die as one watched a play. Whoever they were, they were garbed in red (or was it the fire?), staring him down listlessly, mouthing something just as Ephraim's sight faded away from him for the final time. His final thoughts were, sadly, on what that person had said to him as he fell into a painless darkness.

_It will not end like this_, he was sure the figure had said, _Don't fret_.

* * *

Scene III:

Earth

* * *

Dark blood and brain matter stained the barren earth of Serenes Forest, blending in with the black muck that had once been lush, rich soil. With each and every step, Ike's boots sank deeper into the ground and squelched like a cry when removed, which became harder and harder each time. The mercenary hitched the laguz woman higher so the tips of her wings did not scrape painfully against his fingers. Despite her amazingly light weight, his arms were beginning to ache after constantly adjusting her position and his grip on a sword.

The woman (or girl, rather, since a glance put her at about Mist's age) had fallen unconscious some time ago, after he and the other members of the Greil Mercenaries had first come across her, looking like the proverbial angel in the darkness. Since then, she had been nothing more than dead weight that kept Ike at the back lines of the battle, unable to do much more than cast a hard blue glare around the sights of the now blood-soaked as well as dead forest and yell commands for the others to carry out. He hitched her up higher so he was gripping her knees rather than her thighs, so that the faint voice in the far back of his mind could stop complaining about inappropriately gripping her.

Of all the battlefields Ike had fought upon since first joining the ranks of his father's company, he thought dumbly as he watched Zihark jab his crooked sword through a coat of chain mail with barely a crunch, Serenes Forest had to be the worst. It was not as though the battle was something monstrous, since Duke Tanas's miniature army was little different than pirates or bandits, but it was the scene the bloody spectacle had been cast onto.

The forest seemed to soak in everything that made fighting difficult and magnify it until it began to make Ike's stomach knot. The charred blackness of the trees and muddy ground matched perfectly with the dark sky so that it became hard to distinguish which was shadow and which was solid, and the air was ferociously stagnant, keeping every smell to the ground and wafting in the combater's faces with every harsh gust of wind. No other scent that wafted around was more prominent than the metallic of the blood, obvious even to the beorc who fought there. From where Lethe stood as Ike's sole cover, he could see the faint flickers of pain the smell must cause to her, though she raised no complaint.

He stooped slightly as the girl's head lolled onto his shoulder, her closed eyes turned up towards the black sky that barely showed the sights of the approaching dawn. Although he couldn't see it, her lips were trembling, as though the nighttime sky made her sad. Ike's attention was focused more on several of his men (it felt odd to hear himself say that, however, even if it was true now and had been for some months) and how they were faring against the soldiers that the duke had employed to find his _'piece of art'_; the other heron, who Nasir had mentioned to be a man. With some small pride, he could see the majority of the mercenaries winning their respective fights, perhaps because Begnionite soldiers were not so accustomed to marching through mud when the rest of the country was flatland or desert.

Titania was removing her axe from the body of a Begnionite knight, at the same time prying an arrow from the plates of her armor and making a face at the speckles of blood present on the arrowhead. Her white armor and Puck (the aging warhorse that had stood faithfully beside her since she'd been a knight of Crimea) were smattered with black mud that clung like sludge. Close towards the scarlet-haired woman was Oscar and Rolf. The latter rode with a disturbingly green expression and eerily steady hand when he pulled back the bowstring. Usually, the middle brother of the three hung close to the other two, and Ike couldn't spy the axe-wielding Boyd anywhere.

On cue, perhaps, in the bloody scene, Boyd called out his commander's name and stumbled into view from the left, his axe dangling from loose fingers and brisk slow. It was almost as if he didn't remember they were fighting, for Ashera's sake, but the reason became clearer as he came closer. Lethe's ears pulled back and a strong twitch of pain took over her face. In a hiss, she turned half a head towards Ike and he saw her pupils were impossibly thin and her nostrils were flaring.

"Poison!" she hissed, her words high-pitched and growling at the same time, "Those humans used the holy woods to make poison!" The insults she undoubtedly issued next were lost in a series of cries that made up the Gallian's native dialect.

Unhampered by the heron's weight, Ike moved towards Boyd and noticed, with narrowing eyes, what Lethe had spoken of. Boyd's arm was slit from shoulder to wrist by what Ike could only assume to be a sword, though the blade had missed any vital tendons or veins and did not appear extraordinarily deep. The blood that came from the wound, though, was darker than natural - a blackish color tinted with original red. On inspection with a keener eye, the wound was shown to be surrounded by a thick, dark liquid – the poison that Lethe had mentioned, without a doubt, although Ike was no expert in the field.

"Where's Rhys?" Boyd asked of his commander, his words lethargic - almost intoxicated. It was that, and the glassy eyes and the green-hued coloring that confirmed to Ike that Boyd was poisoned, with something damnably strong and quick.

"With Soren, I think," Ike said quickly. It took a moment for Boyd to realize Ike had answered, since has asked the question again, his voice shaking. It was quite disturbing to see Boyd - of all people, especially - act so much like an ill child, particularly when the timing was the worst possibly one.

Carefully, so as not to drop the girl and injure her (she looked about as strong as brittle glass), Ike sheathed his sword and fumbled for a skin that had been looped around his belt. It was stamped with the overly intricate seal of Manial Cathedral's apothecary. Captain Sigrun had given it to him before they had entered Serenes this final time. Already, it was half-empty. What was inside, though, was strong and should heal Boyd's poisoning completely. He extended it towards Boyd as best he could, with the girl's blonde head falling to press against Ike's chest. "Here, this'll help."

Boyd fumbled with the cap of the elixir, dropping his axe carelessly where it could have cut his foot in half, and emptied the skin instantly. The opaque elixir gushed down his sliced arm and the wound closed almost instantly. The dazed and sickened look did not leave the mercenary's eyes, though, and his grip on the leather skin was shaking horribly. Ike's scowl deepened, but not out of anger. That was _damn _strong poison if the elixir had failed to cleanse it.

"Lethe," Ike asked, and before he had finished speaking the laguz was before him, doing her best to stand with a soldier's stance and blankness in her eyes, "Can you watch her while I find Rhys?" She knew he meant the girl slung on his back, still in an unconscious stupor with her lips trembling and eyes fluttering with some horror in her dream-world. A little bit of surprise lingered in Lethe's feline eyes, perhaps due to the fact she was unused to beorc doing anything but bark insults and commands at her (not that she did much different, to be honest), but since it was a request and not an order, she nodded curtly.

"Of course I will! I will not let these filthy beorc complete the genocide they began twenty years ago!"

Carefully, Ike gave the girl to Lethe, and the angelical heron seemed to shiver at the Gallian's touch. Whither or not it was because of the change in grip or the fact the girl could sense another laguz's closer presence, Ike didn't know or think of. Instead, his attention turned back to Boyd, who was starring blindly at a spot ahead of him, slowly sinking into the mud. Slowly, Ike spoke to Boyd, "Stay here with Lethe. I'm going to go get Rhys to heal you."

How much of the message the poisoned mercenary received, Ike didn't know, but the dazed nod and slurred, almost drunkenly so, '_Yessir' _was enough of a response Ike needed. Drawing his sword from its sheath with a click, relishing its feel in his hands, Ike left the girl with Lethe's capable hands and moved quickly, not staying long in one spot so he wouldn't sink too far into the mud, he reached where Titania sat upon faithful Puck.

Her face was flushed, almost matching her shocking red hair, and her axe's blade dripped vermilion onto the ground, which swallowed the blood hungrily. At his sight, Titiania gave Ike a salute that almost caught him off guard. He still needed to get used to his former commander acting as his subordinate. From the lingering look of sorrow in Titania's eyes, she still adjusted to the absence of Greil to salute to.

"Has something happened to the heron?" were the first words out of her mouth, and Ike shook his head. He kept one eye looking around for anybody who would come to try and claim either his or Titania's life, but thankfully much of the duke's force was centered towards the forest's heart along with the bulk of the ragtag army that the Greil Mercenaries had evolved into.

"No, Lethe is guarding her. I need to find Rhys quickly and bring him to Boyd, do you know where he is?" A gust of autumn wind tore through the battlefield and brought a gag to his throat. The wind stank of corpses, blood, and the memory of genocide by fire.

"Is something wrong with Boyd?" she asked, calmly yet with cold concern. Her sharp azure gaze peered over him towards the ruins that had once been the heron's beautiful civilization, but she probably couldn't make out who was Boyd and what was shadow. The darkness of the forest and the early morning hid everything in blackness.

Ike nodded sharply. "He's poisoned, and an elixir didn't cure it. I need to go find Rhys. If you see him at all, send him to the ruins."

"Yes commander," she said, failing to disguise the bite of worry in her voice. She directed Puck towards the forest's heart and dug her heels into his flanks. The warhorse and its rider were off, though not without difficulty in the beginning. Puck's legs had begun to sink into the mud, and his first few steps were obviously painful as he fought to pull himself from the capturing black earth. When finally he was free (after several horrible squeals from the mud that must have echoed the screams of the dying herons two decades ago), he went into gallop only at Titania's urgings. Ike followed north, but went northwest rather than Titania's northeast. The further he went, the more corpses of Bishop Oliver's guard lay on the ground.

Where there was the dead, there were their killers.

Mia, covered head to toe in black mud and blood, gave a cry that contradicted with her cheery disposition as she charged towards an armored man and barely dented his armor. As the Begnionite soldier lumbered towards the swordswoman, Lady Astrid - whose armor remained clean, surprisingly - aimed her bow and shot with amazing accuracy at the spot between the man's helmet and the top of his armor. The arrow pierced directly into the back of his neck, paralyzing the man with a scream. Gatrie (at Astrid's side, as he had been since rejoining the mercenaries he had abandoned tactlessly months ago) pierced the soldier's side with a fast stab to the side. It sunk in deeper than any blow Mia could have landed and was certainly the strike that killed the man, though Ike didn't stay and watch him die.

His attention had been pulled away by something that caused him to scowl and swear. More soldiers, a _lot _more soldiers, adorned with scarlet armor and the Holy Seal of the Begnion Empire were making their way through the dead or dying trees of Serenes Forest, their boots squelching through the mud and breaking the blackened limbs. Judging by the size of the approaching platoon, Duke Tanas himself appeared to be coming. If Tanith's and Sigrun's explanation pre-battle conference with him and Soren were much to go by, than Oliver would be hell on his own, never mind the army of reinforcements coming with him.

The first two Begnionite soldiers approaching caught sight of Ike, who stood roughly alone, and one of them seemed to recognize him from the Greil Mercenaries' invasion of the Duke's villa earlier that weak. Snapping something to the other, the soldier raised his spear and advanced quickly (or as quickly as one could run in heavy mud and heavier armor) on the younger commander. Vengeance was in their eyes, a battle cry spilling from their lips, even though Ike had never wronged the men personally.

_Nationalism_, he thought bitterly.

The first strike was sloppy, either due to the mud pulling at the soldier's feet or poor training, and Ike could easily counter it by snapping the soldier's lance with a well-placed slash. Quicker than the soldier could manage, Ike slammed the sharp edge of his sword through the plates of burgundy armor and, with a soft, sick tear that drew copper blood up to his lips and onto Ike's face, the soldier fell. However, the mercenary commander could not block the stab of another's spear through his arm, though the wound was not ferociously deep. He did yell out in pain.

Blocking the thin weapon with his sword, Ike drew the heel of his boot up with a squelch and kicked the soldier as hard as he could in the chest. Although a slight echo of pain fled through his foot, the man stumbled backwards and fell victim to a swift decapitation from Ike's sword.

Tearing a strip of cloth from his cape and making a poor tourniquet around his wound, Ike's dark eyes scoured the dark forest for any sight of either the redheaded priest or his brunette sister, yet both were far from his field of vision. He did know, though, that Rhys was with Soren, so all he had to do was wait for a flash of magic and follow its light and wind.

Boyd probably wouldn't last that long though, if that poison was indeed strong. Ike hurried to the left, occasionally attacked by an overeager knight of Begnion. Considering any skirmish Ike found himself in ended quickly, he found himself giving a grim smile despite the surrounding battle. Either his swordsmanship was improving, or the army of Begnion had been over-exaggerated all these years.

"There's the leader!"

The Commander of the Greil Mercenaries turned in time to see at least a half dozen soldiers, two of which were on horseback, hurrying towards him. Ike could not hold back a string of very nasty swears just as he raised his sword to block the swing of knight's axe.

This action, however, left him no time to block or sidestep a stab from a lance to his side or an arrow sinking into the back of his right shoulder. Both actions left a hot trickle of blood seep through his jerkin and a sharp pain in both sides of his body. He bit down on his tongue to keep from yelling, an action which caused his mouth to filled with the iron taste of blood.

Ike spun his sword to slice through the soldier's face, smattering the ground with brain matter and blood that only added to the putrid aroma in the air, and kill him instantly. The enemy's death came at the price of another slice from a lance to the skin above his eye, taking a nice slice of his skin along with it, and a second arrow to the shoulder.

"Elwind!"

Sharp winds licked at the blood on Ike's brow, so suddenly that it cut deeper than the lance had. He blinked speckles of blood out of his eye and ran the back of his hand across his brow to clean off the blood. His vision clear, Ike spotted a frail-looking young man balancing a thick tome on his heel of his palm, quickly speaking a clear spell to the stagnant air of Serenes Forest.

Again, the squall winds reared and snapped the neck of the soldier whose lance had injured Ike and enough of a distraction for the mercenary to slice his sword through the middle of a fourth soldier. The blade met too great of a resistance against the armor, and the sword dented near the tip. The both of the horseback knights left Ike quickly as the winds from Soren's magic died down, both in search of a weaker enemy.

The staff officer of the mercenaries turned his crimson eyes to Ike, taking note immediately of the blood on his face and side but saying nothing. Rhys, who stood directly behind Soren with a book of Light magic in one hand and a staff in another, followed the mage's trail of vision intently. Without saying anything, he raised the staff and touched the deep wound at Ike's ribcage with the orb of the scepter.

"Mend," said Rhys weakly. His voice still tinged from a lapse of illness he had suffered the previous week. Ike gave a smile in relief as he felt his skin sew itself together instantaneously, but the smile dropped quickly.

"Thank you," he said to the priest, who nodded his head. Ike continued before Rhys could say anything, "Rhys, back near the ruins is Boyd – he's poisoned badly. An elixir didn't cure him. Get to him as quick as you can."

"I didn't see any of the soldiers hear carrying poisoned weapons," Soren said delicately, in his familiar, half-paranoid manner. Ike's eyes narrowed a tad, not out of anger, but at the sudden pull of the wind blew the stench of death up into his face. Everything seemed so much more magnified in this hideous forest.

"Nevertheless, he looks about to die," Ike responded, if not a little impatiently. Some soldier, whose colors Ike didn't know, had screamed in utter agony and fright. The sound, sounding so much worse in Serenes than it would have on any other plane, sent the hairs on the back of his neck on end. Rhys's pallid cheeks went a bit paler.

"Near the ruins, you said?" he asked quickly. Even before Ike could give a proper response, Rhys's orange eyes were traveling through the muck of the forest floor towards what remained of the heron civilization. There was only a crumbled archway and a standing pillar that may or may not have depicted offerings to Ashera.

"Yes, Titania's –" Ike never would get a chance to finish his sentence.

A female voice screamed out to Ike's left. He dimly knew to be the squeal of the female mage employed by the Greil Mercenaries from back in Gallia – Elaice or Ilyana, he thought. He turned to spy the frail girl falling to all fours with a deep gash bleeding across her belly, her hands quickly stained red as she gripped her abdomen. Her Wind tome went flying across the ground, the cover tearing off as it was engulfed by the black mud. Faintly, the arcane writing in the book glowed jade.

Far more dangerous than the broken book was the magic she had been casting, which had been completed in its entirety. Although Ilyana had fallen, her incantation was complete, and her spell took its full effect. The gale of the Wind spell blew mud, blood and the horrible, horrible stench that permeated throughout the forest everywhere, slicing hair into Ike's face like the strands were miniature daggers. However, instead of hitting the enemy soldier it had been aimed for, the wind spun far off target. The magic – of a lesser caliber then what Soren had cast, yet nevertheless powerful – slammed through a weak tree closer towards the three. Against the dry wood, the wind ignited the base of a brittle tree, and it began to slip from its trunk.

The tree took an eternity to fall. For that eternity, Ike found himself unable to move as if the tree fell in a split second. Paralysis – through fear, surprise, or the mud sucking him down, he did not know – restricted him to the spot. When he would later recall the situation, he could summon no explanation as to why he could not move.

When that infinity ended and the tree took three whole seconds to collide with the ground, he felt the trunk slam against his shoulders and knock him flat to the ground. There was a crack as his shoulder and arm broke to pieces, another few as his ribs broke. Ike couldn't keep the scream of utter pain from escaping his mouth, along with it blood from what felt to be a punctured lung.

He was pinned to the ground, all feeling gone from his lower body and spreading up towards his upper body. His left arm hung, full of agony, lamely at his side, so Ike could only use his right arm to try and push the tree-trunk off of his body. The splinters bit hard into his hand and fingers, drawing blood, but his grip was too weak.

Vaguely he heard people, their voices fading away into blackening sounds but definitely Soren and Rhys, maybe Titania, said something. Ike shut his eyes, as the feeling of the many broken bones was bringing the taste of illness to his tongue (along with the salty, unforgettable taste of blood). When the task of pushing the tree off of him proved fruitless, he set his hand behind him to push him up. Ike sank deeper into the black earth of Serenes Forest. Hungrily, it moved through his fingers and swallowed his arm, so that he could possibly try to pull himself out.

He kept his eyes shut tightly as he remained in the mud. His breathing was heavy, but broken, and each exhale pushed out a great deal of blood. Each time Ike tried to open his eyes, he saw not the dawn-gray sky, but blinding dots of white that swiftly faded to blackness. He was beyond dazed, focusing entirely on his breathing and the life that was dwindling out of him. Miserably, he thought, his final picture of the world above him was that of something – someone, he supposed – that could not possibly be in the geographical scar Serenes had become in the last two decades.

A figure in deep, sweeping colors of a decorated army man, the face obscured in shadow, the eyes glittering with a deep fury. He gave no aide to Ike, though he obviously saw his pain and misery down like a coward on the ground. From beneath the shadows of his face, Ike watched as the man moved his thin lips and spoke something that he did not register. The words had melded in with the fading, popping clamor of the battle occurring all around him. Still, he thought he got the message, which constituted his final thoughts as the mud engulfed him with its blackness.

_You cannot die_.

* * *

Scene IV:

Wind

* * *

Bitter winds rattled the leaves on the trees, a thin layer of powdery snow shadowing the ground blown in from the high tops of the monolithic mountains. Bern was known for the cruel, unforgiving hand that Father Winter continually cast upon it. Horribly, this was intensified in the deep pits of the Kerrigan Mountains, far from the capital and any semblance of human civilization and warmth. The only thing that Roy of Pherae could thank Elimine for in the frozen hell of the mountains was that it was still early in the season, and the weather was not as terrible as it could have been.

His fingers curled tighter around his rapier's hilt, and his blue eyes looked darkly over the battlefield the snowy vale had become. Dozens of men with the crest of Bern's glorious Wyvern Riders littered the ground, seemingly creating a sea of multi-colored scales that hid the pure white of the snow beneath. Every corpse that Roy laid his eyes upon had been doubly slain – the wyvern first, full of arrows or magical burns, and the rider by any conceivably means available to keep the Lycian soldier alive. A coat of a bloody and snow amalgamation adorned the heels of Roy's boots, as well as the hem of his cape.

The number of dead riders was staggering, never mind the various other paladins and archers the Lycian Alliance Army had struck down this day. Bern had certainly made ever attempt to keep the army away from the Shrine of Seals, Roy noted with something between a tired sigh and an angry yawn. In the far back of his mind, he remembered his father – who now laid abed back home in Pherae, teetering between life and death – telling him of a similar battle taking place on this ground twenty odd years ago, in December as well. The cause of such an epic battle eluded Roy, as Marquess Pherae had chosen to swear himself to silence, but the irony was not spared on the young general.

He commanded the army, just as his father had, with only a twenty year gap separating the battle.

"Roy! Watch out!"

He spun around on his heels just in time to spot a Bernese soldier – his face a bloody mess, and his eyes ravenous for revenge – raise a heavy axe over his head, preparing to cleave Roy neatly into two. The axe was nicked and covered in strings of flesh, better fitting some Nabatan brigade instead of a valorous soldier of King Zephiel, but the weapon's state did not matter a damned bit. Dodging out of the way by an inch, Roy thrust all his weight into a single stab of his sword, piercing through the man's ribs straight to the other side. His armor had been cracked from various other encounters with Roy's men, and made him an easy man to fall.

The soldier sputtered, his axe falling with a crack to cleave his toes from his foot. In an arc, he fell to the ground and Roy withdrew his sword from the still warm corpse. The blood on steel glittered disturbingly in the winter sunshine.

Turning to face his savior as he wiped his blade clean on his cape, Roy spotted the emerald-haired Etrurian Sorcery General, seemingly unaffected by any sort of attack or injury – although the wounds sustained by King Zephiel had limited her to the back lines of the army, on a request by both her one-time student and her blonde colleague. Cecilia sat tall and proud on the back of her mare Freya, and a relieved smile passed her lips when she saw her commanding officer standing unharmed, but breathing heavily.

"Thank you for the warning," he said with a sharp nod of his head.

"Think nothing of it. However, you should keep a sharper eye on your own surroundings rather than those of your soldiers," she responded sagely. She tugged at the reins of her warhorse to keep her from licking the blood off a Wyvern's scales.

"Are we doing well? You can probably see more than me from atop your horse." Roy knew what Cecilia was about to say, judging from the dark grimace that crossed her face and the obvious effort she used in picking her words.

"I would say . . . we are faring decently. The front lines are tiring, and we are severely out numbered. Are you sure you don't wish to send in the reinforcements the King Mordred sent with us? They are well rested and eager to fight."

Roy gave a dark frown and shook his head. It was bad enough that the three greatest Etrurian generals were in battle, alongside the disguised prince, but should too many men die under his command, the traitorous High Court (already displeased with Roy after the fiasco of killing Arcard and Roartz, despite their treason) could demand fair compensation by the war-torn Lycian League. "Don't send them immediately into the fray unless it becomes obvious that we're losing," he told her, thinking quickly as he spoke, "Send word, however, and have them prepare to make up the last defense – guarding Princess Guinevere. If the Wyvern Riders kill more than ten of the rear guard, give them orders to flee for the border."

"Understood." With that and a nod, Cecilia tugged on Freya's reigns and the warhorse began a furious gallop towards the mouth of the vale, where the army's camp and the great force of the soldiers lay in wait. In the far distance, Roy could spy the navy armor of an Ostian knight brigade, whom Lilina had helped bring alongside them.

He turned away from what was behind him and instead forward. A sinking feeling was filling his chest, an odd spike of adrenaline lacing through his veins. Throughout the war, he had these periods of dread, and they almost always foreshadowed danger. His fingers tightened over the wire-wrapped hilt of his rapier and his face set in grim determination as he searched.

Just ahead and at a turn in the valley path, a bloodied Wyvern struggling back to the sky. Its half-vanquished rider was slumped in the saddle but grasping his spear with enough of a grip to kill any Lycian fool to come his way. His footing surprisingly firm in the snow, Roy took off running, kicking up bloody snow into the air. With a cry fueled by adrenaline passing his lips, he stepped onto an uneven piece of ground and into the air.

The rapier met with the silver shaft of the spear with an unholy clang. Roy landed on the hind of the dragon-like beast, causing the beast to snap its head around to glare at the redheaded general. As he landed back to the ground, Roy pierced his sword through the creature's wing, dragging the half-flying animal towards the ground. The Wyvern gave an almighty, banshee screech, pinned to the ground and unable to move less it loose a limb. A single move had made the infamous animal become a little more useful than a pair of boots with fangs. The rider looked at Roy with eyes smattered with blood, a deep cut on his brow leaking the liquid into his vision steadily. He abandoned his mount with a lost, pained look that vanished quickly when he looked back towards Roy.

Before he spoke, he had to spit out a mouthful of blood, bile, and what looked like skin lining the inside of his cheeks. "What manner of monster are you – who tries to kill a man when he's down and dying?" The words struck hard and stung. The Pherean general gave a furious scowl and tore his sword from the Wyvern's wing. The creature howled in misery, twisting its neck around to lick at its blood.

"I am no monster. Monsters invade countries without warning and slaughter innocent people!" Roy snarled, brandishing his blade, ready for the rider to charge with intent to slay.

The rider gave a wheezy, broken laugh, coughing blood and spit onto Roy's face. The young man barely flinched and clenched his teeth. Uneasily – owing to the wide gash in his leg that exposed both muscle and bone – the rider assumed a similar stance.

"Isn't that what the Lycian army did in the Western Isles?" the Bernese man hissed. He had, perhaps, resigned himself to death and wanted a final chance to attack his enemy when his strength would fail to kill Roy.

His temper snapped; a rare event that later Roy was sure he'd deeply regret. Snarling furiously, he charged with the memory of Roartz's manipulation as his fuel. He didn't even feel the spear pierce through his shoulder, crunching bone as it did so, but he felt the hot smatter of blood on his cheeks and hands as he shoved his sword through soldier's throat. The gag on steel and blood was enough to snap Roy out of the state of madness he had slipped into, and soften his eyes.

The sight of the body before him, while not different than all the ones that lay dead in the valley around him, or all the ones that had died in the course of the war, made Roy's stomach turn.

He drew out his sword with his left hand, as his right one had quickly gone numb from the wound in the shoulder. He sheathed his blade delicately, his eyes flickering to anything that moved within a five foot radius of where he stood (minus the dying Wyvern in front of him, which would never recover from the tear in its wing or the stab in its belly, as Roy saw). When Roy was sure there was no great threat before him, he grabbed the silver spear with both his hands very tightly and braced himself. Even preparing himself for the sharp, almost too sharp, pain as the spear was pulled from his flesh, Roy yelled with tears in the corners of his eyes. He tossed it to the ground.

The warmth of the blood flowing from the wound felt like his arm had been engulfed in flames. He pressed the base of his palm to the mess of torn flesh and fabric, and he ground his teeth together in pain. He regretted having sent Cecilia towards the reinforcement camp, now needing her skills with a healing staff desperately. At least the spear was gone from his shoulder, and had Roy taken a better education in medicine, he would have realized the weapon should have been kept in his shoulder so he would not bleed to death. Instead, he thought of who could tend to the wound.

Lilina, he remembered, had talent with the clerical arts, and Lilina always remained in the middle lines. The other healers – Saul and Clarine and Ellen – often flittered between the front and middle lines. Freya would have taken Cecilia to the camp by now and Roy could not catch up to her. The bishop Yodel, generous enough to aid the army in this battle, was following orders that Roy couldn't recall and might have been anywhere in all the mountains. With the amount of blood pouring from the spear's wound, Roy doubted he had the time to go on a wild goose chase for one of them, thus making Lilina his best chance at survival.

His run was jerky, and far too often he found himself tripping over an arm or leg of the dead. As he ran, Roy made sure to keep one hand firmly pressed against the injury. The hand, both back, palm, and the glove adorning it were nearly black from the life-giving elixir spilling out of the tear. His other hand, however, fumbled with the torn hem of his cape to rip off another strip to use as a tourniquet. The wet material proved stubborn to tear in his haste, however.

"AIRCALIBUR!"

_Thank you Roland, _Roy thought as he recognizedLilina's voice. The fevered, harmonic sound of her Ostian accent was butchered by blind panic and fear. Roy held his rapier, and the task of making a tourniquet abandoned when he heard her scream. The pain numbed back away as epinephrine and dread refilled his body, his boots slamming onto the slushy ground as he hurried towards the side of his childhood friend.

Lilina, the heiress to the proud dukedom of Ostia, was holding onto her magic tome in a white-knuckled death grip. She spat out arcane incantations like they were curses. Three Wyverns hovered over her head, dodging various shots of wind and fire. An archer clung to the back of one of the riders, and he would often fire bolts upon the sapphire-haired lass. Lithe as she was, she was only lightly wounded where a slower or thicker individual might have been dead.

"Lilina!" he bellowed out, charging forward to stand in front of her. An arrow, by almost demonic luck, struck him in the chest, sinking deep into his side and into his lung. Blood pooled up into his mouth, and he tried in vain not to scream (although he did yell and grip the site of the wound). His head swam. Lilina gave a screech of horror behind him as he fell to his knee.

She dropped her tome in a fumble (Lilina was still young, despite her impressive battle record at fourteen, and could not be blamed for such a reckless mistake). She pulled from her back a long, gold-gilded staff topped with an orb the size of a child's head.

"Roy, don't die!" she screamed, almost slamming the staff into his skull and bellowing several words in the magical language that Ellen had taught her.

Cold relief flooded over his flesh, and in a miracle he had always considered a gift by the heroes themselves, Roy watched as his skin mended back together flawlessly. The only thing left behind where the arrow and the spear had struck were white scars on his tanned skin.

"How delightful young love is!" one of the riders cackled.

It was a female, surprisingly, with dark blonde hair and bloodred eyes. By her battle-scarred, gray and red armor, she was a seasoned fighter – a Wyvern Lord, Roy realized with a hissed string of colorful phrases, when he saw the gilded metal epaulettes on her shoulders. She swept low to the ground and disturbing the snow with the flaps of her Wyvern's black wings. Her subordinates echoed her sociopathic laughter.

Lilina's response was simple. She lunged for the tome she had dropped before the female lord had a chance to impale the girl with the javelin. The weapon slammed into the ground and quivered with a sound faintly similar to a tuning fork. Lilina pulled open the creased pages of her azure tome, whilst Roy ran towards a body he saw, spread eagle on the ground. Although he might greatly distain against the act of grave-robbing, the sword in the dead Bernese soldier's hands was a sword shimmering with a hue of indigo that could only be described as magic. Wind magic, to be precise, and the winds would knock the Wyvern Lord to the ground, where Roy could stand a fairer chance against her.

His rapier back in its sheath, he wrapped his fingers about the Wind Sword's hilt. Caught off guard by its weight for a moment, he stuck both hands around it and lifted it up with a massive heave and a faint groan. The power imbued within the silver of the blade hummed against his fingertips and he raised it high above his head, shouting out a phrase he'd heard Lilina utter millions of times since both aristocratic children had been nine years old.

"Aircalibur!"

The slicing winds of the magic in the blade bit into Roy's cheeks, but it received the effect that brought a sick grin of success to his face. It combined with the same spell that Lilina had summoned, and the gale alone snapped the neck of one rider and tore the gossamer wings off of two of the three Wyverns. The effect was horrifyingly amazing.

The blonde Wyvern Lord leapt out of the saddle of her faithful beast, landing to the ground with a crunch. The high heels of her boots cracked the fingers of a dead man's hand; a sound Roy would have been very glad never to hear again. Her hands tore her javelin from the ground, and she spun her lance in a dramatic pattern. The spin blocked Roy's strike effortlessly as he slammed the Wind Sword against the silver.

Too late did he realize that the blade's hilt was still humming.

The second magical blast, summoned wordlessly from the blessed blade, recoiled against the metal on the spear's staff. While the Wyvern Lord sank deep and back into the snow, her face bleeding from numerous scratches from the sharp winds and friction burns, Roy was flown backwards by the force. He sailed through the air before slamming – with a sick, nasty crack – into the trunk of an ancient relic of a tree. It felt like ceramic tile against the back of his head and on his back.

Roy ground his teeth painfully together, his body numb and limp, and felt a vein of blood slide down his back. His mind was dazed, unable to comprehend exactly what was going on before him any longer. Between the blinding stars of white twinkling before his eyes, he spotted the Wyvern Lord waltzing up towards him, a malicious smile licking her lips. He tried to grasp the hilt of either the Wind Sword or the rapier, but his fingers wouldn't respond to a single demand from his brain.

Roy could only look up at his soon-to-be killer, damning his own sheer, rotten luck that he was to die as helpless as a child after surviving so many battles as a man – a general, no less. The whiteness of his vision blocked out most of his surroundings now. Roy did not feel, however, the sting of the spear piercing his flesh, but heard Lilina give a scream that faded in and out of volume.

"ELFIRE! AIRCALIBUR!"

The Elfire summon hit its mark with near perfection – a testament to Lilina's decade of training in the magical arts. The female Wyvern Lord gave an unholy scream of pain, and Roy could even feel the heat coming off her cooking flesh. Her body fell to the ground, writhing and twitching at the toes of Roy's boots, still screaming as she died. The second spell had been pure overkill, however, and failed to hit its intended target.

His paralysis left him all too quickly, only in time to feel a strange sensation over take every inch of his body; weightlessness. Roy blinked furiously, clearing his eyes of the white in time to see a sight that brought all the meager contents of his stomach flooding into his mouth.

The squall of winds Lilina had summoned had thrown him nearly fifteen feet into the wintry air above the battlefield. The mountainous winds snapped his hair into his face and his cape around his body. The sight was one that he would remember for the rest of his life. He spotted a monstrous scene displayed before him, corpses and fighting intermittent between the sea of trees, Wyverns and Peagsi flying through the air – along with a tooth-and-claw battle between Nabatan Fa and a demonic fire dragon. Roy watched, and one of his attacks of oncoming dread hit as he fell back towards the ground.

Air whistled in his ears and burned his skin as gravity slammed him back towards the valley. His mind, which had remained logical during even the most heated of battles thus far, had fallen into a hysterical, panicking blank when only childish fear was heard. Roy could only shut his eyes and tense every muscle in his body, preparing for the sick crack of all his bones breaking when he slammed into the soft ground and snow far below him.

It was not the ground that finally collided with his skin, but rather the dagger sharp twigs of a tree. He landed on his arm on a tree branch, the bones in his arm cracking by the sheer force of the fall. Roy could not help but swear and scream loudly, his voice echoing all around him. The cursing was broken off immediately as the tree branch cracked. The wood splintered, unable to hold his weight. His heartbeat stopped momentarily as the branch separated completely from the mother trunk.

Again, he fell, and this time there was only the ground beneath him to break his fall. Seven feet from the branch to the ground remained, enough of a distance so that, if his luck ran low, he could certainly be killed. The ground came far too quickly for Roy to do anything other than shield his face and hope that – by some miracle – this didn't kill him.

He landed face down in the powdery snow and underbrush. Twigs snagged against his face, and the hard ground cracked the bones in his palms and the one leg that crumpled beneath him. By the grace of Saint Elimine herself, the fall had not robbed him of life or limb. With a faint smile at this realization, Roy gingerly rolled onto his back, savoring the idea that he was still alive.

However, the minute his eyes turned skyward, they widened violently, and as a reflex he brought his hands up to defend himself.

The Wind Sword, which had flown up with him, had not yet touched the ground. When it finally hit solid, it was through Roy's chest – so close to his heart that he was damn sure it was going to kill him.

Pain, slow and mounting pain, overtook his body. Within seconds, paralysis returned, so that he could not move a single inch of his half-broken body. He lay on the forest floor, helplessly pinned there by a sword that had gotten him into the situation in the first place. His eyes (the only part of him that he still seemed able to manipulate) starred up at the surprisingly pure, azure sky as his world slowly turned to gray. In his mind, with nothing else to do, Roy began to count down how long it was taking before the gray faded into a cold, inky-blackness.

What was that picture, standing in the middle of the haze of gray? Was it a person, a Bernese soldier, or one of his own men? If it was the latter, he failed to recognize the hard features on the face (female, was it, or simply that of a very young, feminine boy?), or the long sweeping coat of iris indigo, swept up around the body by a strong zephyr. The eyes were furiously, and a gleaming color that reminded him faintly of somebody . . .

The lips on the face moved, the last image before cold darkness took Roy. In his last moments, he made out a message on the lips – though whither the figure had spoken, or if he had read the movements correctly, he had no energy to fathom.

_You shall live yet._

* * *

Scene V:

Aether

* * *

"I was supposed to the job. You didn't have any right to send your shadows to catch those bastards." The First voice was whining immaturely, with contained anger in the words.

"As I may be so inclined to remind you, Your Honor, you were in no hurry to expend any time or Commissioners on your behalf to get the job done. In fact, it was all _my _doing that had the job done." The Second voice was haughty.

"We all cannot spare as time as you, Your Excellency. My point was that it was _my _task to do the deed, which you _stole _and I want compensation!" spat the First voice.

"Enough! Your conversation bores me. If everything is in order, I would like to retire to my Maze and rest. It is cumbersome traveling all the way to meet you all. Perhaps we should consider changing the location of these meeeeetingss . . ." The Third voice trailed away with a wide yawn and a snore.

"We'll proceed as planned. And I can get my hands on that goddamn brat, right? He's got more than enough guts in him so that I can finally get my hands on that goddamn little bi -"

"Patience, Marshal, patience. You wouldn't want to get ahead of yourself now and lose your temper? Haha, what a little sight that would be!" There was a sound of leather against flesh as the owner of the Fourth Voice slapped the Fifth's cheek. She laughed melodically, a pleased sound.

"So we're done here, then? I'm sure I have a wonderful . . . something to attend to back at home. A something with food. And drink. And damn well more riveting aspects of cultured life you blathering fools wouldn't understand." The Sixth voice was horribly insulting, and the Fourth gave a roar of fury and there was a repeated sound of slapping and shouts of pain.

"That's enough! We have better things to deal with, things to collect! All of you, have you forgotten why we have done this? We have kingdoms and soldiers to collect and imposters - thieves and heartless bandits! - to destroy! Off your knees and off of her, you damn fool! Would you rather fight an ally instead of the one who robbed you of everything that _should be yours!_"

The Seventh voice was silencing. It remained quiet for a long time until, at last, the Second voice broke the silence with fury.

"We serve you not, Your Majesty, and I will not stand to be ordered around by the likes of – !"

"I don't give orders, I give reminders! You remember the wrongs done to us and what is rightfully ours by birthright and by blood! We have no use quabbling amidst our allies and friends when we have kingdoms to reclaim! I will be damned before I let our birthrights slip between our fingers, and you be damned if you let it happen!"

Again, the silencer quieted them all, until a melodic chuckle escaped the Fifth voice. It spoke huskily, perhaps due to the wounds inflicted by the owner of the Fourth's. "And we have no right to be damned, robbed of everything . . ."

"We deserve to take _revenge_."

They all chorused in agreement.

* * *

Disclaimer:

I do not own Fire Emblem, as the series is copyrighted to the good people of Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. I also do not own the opening quote; it is a belonging of the mind of sir Friedrich Nietzsche. However, I do own this story, and all original characters within it.

Author's Note:

Yes, this is a reposting of an old fic I took down some months ago. I spent a while debating about whether or not I should repost and revise it, but I finally did and had it undergo some major editing – both grammatically and plotline wise. I sincerely hope that my time was not spent in vain, as I do like the idea greatly.

While I would be a liar in saying that I wouldn't want all my chapters to be this long, this is probably the longest one I'll post for a long time. I had considered breaking it up into four or five short chapters, but it seemed like a waste since all the scenes connect and separating them would just be nasty.

In regards to the content of Roy's sections, I'm using the names which I've found to be the most common translations. I'm perfectly willing to change a name so that readers will be able to understand which character I'm referring to, and (hopefully) his sections will be simple enough to understand to people who haven't played his game and/or know the story. I will not, however, drop his sections for the sake of convenience.

For those who are curious but don't know, the scene titles are the five classical elements of alchemy. Aether (which is probably the least known, and often spelt as just ether) was thought to be the substance above the earthly realm. Its other name was quintessence.

With that, I'll cease my rambling and ask that if you have read all this, please review. I'd consider it a personal favor. Also, to anybody interested, I am in need of a beta reader.

Statistics:

(Because I know you care)

Pages – 32

Paragraphs – 271

Lines – 1,439

Words – 17,477

Characters- 96,630 (w/o spaces)

Font – Times New Roman

Font Size – 12


	2. What Mine Eyes Have Seen

* * *

_Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today._

_**The Stray Children of Light and Sorrow**_

Written By:

Perenelle Windsor

* * *

Act II:

What Mine Eyes Have Seen

* * *

Scene I:

Sorrowful Child

* * *

Crisp and warm summer sunshine flooded onto the encampment, a warming, pleasant change from the usual blistering heat that came. The camp was perhaps sixty or so miles outside the gates to the Renaitian capital city, where the trees had begun to thin and the sky looked beautifully clear and cloudless. It was an incredibly placid and peaceful day, quite a change from all that had happened before since the Grad invasion. However, the soldiers wandering around the camp were in no way enjoying the change in weather and the brief rest afforded to them.

The fire had been quenched by quick timing on behalf of Mother Nature and three magic-wielders (although Lute was happy to claim her invaluable involvement with the process). The moment the fire had gone, two corpses had been discovered, though only one was dead. Prince Ephraim's body had been found, recognizable only by the Solar Brace clamped onto his wrist. Since then, an unsettling, half-mournful and half-hopeful air had taken over. Princess Eirika embodied the feeling perfectly, having not left the cot-side of her twin brother, examining him and the world with a vacant, teary stare.

The soft-soled boots that adorned Natasha's feet crunched on the leafy and charred floor of the camp. Her thin fingers were curled about the spine of an herbalist's book she had lent to L'Arachel some time ago, the index finger of her left hand holding the parchment shafts open to the details of burn-healing plants. A small bundle of said foliage – the most prominent amongst them flaky tepezcohuite bark – was clasped in her other hand. Beneath her soft glove, her fingers were white and shaking.

It did her heart poorly to know that Prince Ephraim was lying so very near death. It did the entire army's moral badly to know that, and it was not as though the news could have been kept secret for long. Too much of the army had been involved in trying to put a stop to the fire before it had spread, claiming their lives, injuring others, and leaving them pray for the twisted traitors who flew the flag of Sir Orson (now king, though the title was not used). Too many people had seen his screaming, twitching, and unrecognizable body as Seth and Eirika had carried him to the nearest healer (both with a sightless set of eyes).

However, Natasha had to keep her chin up, her pale blue eyes watching the path splayed out before her as she walked towards the medical tent. It was all she could do when she was away from the prince's side.

"How bad is he?" The smooth male voice nearly caught her off guard, but only for a moment. The many months (almost a year now, probably) of traveling with the gambling swordsman had gotten Natasha used to his unexpected striking up of conversations.

She turned around, her white-blonde hair wiping around to strike her cheeks. Her sapphire eyes met quick with a pair of deep ruby red, shadowed under long bangs and a hat's brim. Joshua had only half a smile on his face, and the omnipresent coin he carried was nowhere to be seen. With the obvious exception of battle, and the assassination of his mother (whom Natasha was almost horrified to discover had been Queen Ismaire), she had never seen him fail to flip that coin across his knuckles obnoxiously.

"You surprised me," she said softly, smiling weakly. A small part of her chastised her for failing to bow in the presence of the new Jehannan king, but she could not bring herself to do it. Too long she had known him as a simple mercenary. He did not return the gesture honestly. The smile was far too forced. Natasha tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear and clerical veil. Her words were softer still as she continued; "I would be a liar if I were to say His Majesty is alright." It was funny how Prince Ephraim's title spilled so naturally when she couldn't do the same for Joshua.

Joshua's eyes flickered to the tree bark and plants gripped tightly in her small palm. "Couldn't you just use a healing staff or an elixir? I've never seen a wound one of them wasn't able to fix." He scratched the bridge of his nose; something of a nervous habit that he possessed and Natasha had picked up upon. What caused the twitch, she was not entirely sure.

A frown creased her lips. She was far used to the conception that the wave of a staff and a few funny-sounding words healed everything, but it still bothered her on some level. Natasha chewed her bottom lip nervously, not sure how to phrase the explanation and not sure if she wanted to.

"A healing staff," she began slowly, taking note of how both she and Joshua had begun walking towards the tent marked with a scarlet star (traditional for medicine and healers), "Works by mending flesh and sealing wounds. It . . . well, the holy magic of Saint Latona and God . . . does not work . . . if there is no flesh to mend."

He winced violently, some color vanishing from his cheeks. Joshua again scratched his nose and tugged his hat lower over his eyes.

"Something doesn't quite make much sense about this though," he said in a low voice. It was obvious he was just making conversation to break the awkward and depressing silence that had settled between them at her explanation. "It's odd that there would only be a single mage out in the middle of these woods, and that he would only make himself known when Ephraim and Eirika and Seth were isolated." A bit of color entered her cheeks at how informally he addressed the Renaitian heirs and their general.

Her mind lingered on his words, though. Natasha was no expert on tactics, and was not completely sure if the situation was as bizarre and unusual as Joshua made it seem. Perhaps he was an especially well trained man, or a vigilante out to make his name, or something like that. To keep her mind off of her upcoming duty, of seeing what had become of Renais's handsome son, however, she gave a nod and a '_Yes, of course'_ to answer him.

Sooner than she would have liked, Natasha arrived to folds of gray canvas that made up the medical tent. It was Joshua left her, saying something about needing to talk to Gerik and Marisa. She knew better, though. He had been one of the soldiers who had laid their eyes upon Prince Ephraim's body when Eirika had first pulled him from the scorched underbrush, and had no desire to relive that moment. She ducked her head under the folds, and was treated to the choking, gagging smell of scorched human skin.

Princess Eirika sat on a stool by her brother's side, gingerly gripping his burnt hand. It was evident she wanted to tighten her hold, but feared injuring him – with good reason. Her eyes – raw red from crying and dark rimmed from lack of sleep – were fixed cleanly on his face. It was nearly unrecognizable from the amount of linen bandages wrapped about it, but even without the bandages it would have been impossibly to make him out as the king's son. Had the situation not been so depressingly grim, Ephraim might have looked comical, bound tight in bandages.

Behind Eirika stood stock-still Seth, trying his best to keep his face expressionless and only succeeding by keeping his eyes shut tightly. His red hair contrasted sharply with the waxy color of his skin, having only received such a color from three days without decent rest. Eirika looked much worse off, rather like a soldier coming back from a particularly horrible battle. She had, at least, stopped crying.

Moulder looked up from Ephraim's side where he had been wrapping an arm in clean white bandages at Natasha's entrance.

"Ah, Natasha," he said grimly, setting down Ephraim's arm. Between the bandages and the heavy blanket placed upon him, Natasha could see skin that ranged from the coal black of heavy burns to the blistered yellow remains of skin. "Do you have the comfrey herbs?"

Natasha nodded and headed towards the scarred, ancient wooden desk that the item caravan had provided for the medical tent. As of right now, it was adorned with various books with various methods for burn treatments scrawled on the pages, whilst a wooden mortar and pestle sat atop. She threw the various herbs on top of the books, and dropped both the tepezcohuite and the comfrey into the mortar. All the while, she tried her hardest not to pay attention to the stench of burnt flesh that clung to everything in the tent.

"He's going to get better, right?" Eirika asked breathlessly, though to whom the question was directed to remained a mystery. From the corner of her eye, Natasha spotted Seth seize Eirika's shoulder in a grasp that was certainly nothing like a knight to his liege lady. Nobody made any comment.

"I am sure the prince will manage to pull through," Moulder said, breaking the pessimistic silence that had settled like a shroud over their heads, "He's got a strong will . . . He'll pull through."

"Please." Eirika's voice almost sounded like a sardonic laugh. Natasha paused in her task of grinding the flowers to a paste to look at the teal-haired princess. She had shut her eyes, though tears still dribbled down her pallid cheeks, and her hands gripped Ephraim's hand much tighter. "Please, don't patronize me. Tell me the honest truth. Will my brother live?"

The silence resettled into the tent. Seth's gauntleted hands gripped Eirika's shoulder a bit tighter, though they loosened soon after. Natasha opened her mouth several times, each and every time only a faint sigh passed her lips. Half of her wanted to tell Eirika a lie so that she did not look quite so miserable and broken and the other half wanted to reveal Natasha's true opinion – that it had been an impossible miracle that he had lived through the three days.

Finally, after nearly five solid minutes of unbroken silence (except for the faint rumble of the goings-on of the camp outside the tent, which seemed like a distant and alien existence), it was broken by a violent string of hacking coughs, mingled blood and bile evident in the throat of the cougher. Ephraim's body stirred on the cot, shaking as he gave a wheezy cough that ended in a low moan of utmost pain.

"Brother!" Eirika screamed, grabbing Ephraim's hand very tightly with both of hers. Hope flared across her face, tears of joy welling in her eyes, "Brother! Are you alive?"

Only the faintest of moans answered Eirika's inquiry, but they were all the response she needed to look at Seth with the utmost expression of relief and glee on her face. Similar relief spread across Natasha's face in a smile as she dropped to her knees. Her fingers fumbled with the lock of the glass and oak cabinet beneath the desk, which contained the army's entire (and diminishing) supply of salves and elixirs. When the lock finally was off, she grabbed a glass jar of opaque elixir and hurried to Ephraim's bedside. They could not administer this particular potion to him while he was asleep, as it would have clogged his lungs and choked him as he slept.

_God works in funny ways, _she heard her mind say with a smile.

"This should help him for the moment," she said, handing the vial of alabaster liquid to Eirika, "We could not have given it to him before; he has to drink it himself." Almost instantaneously, Eirika took the jar and uncorked it. It smelled foul, but it didn't matter. Carefully, she lifted Ephraim's head up and pressed the neck of the bottle onto his chapped lips.

"Drink this," Eirika said soothingly, though beneath her calm words was the undeniable sound of hysterical joy. Natasha could understand her sentiments exactly; Ephraim was all the family Eirika had left in the world, what with King Fado assassinated in the fall of Renais, and their mother Annabella dead when the twins had been mere children. As strong as Eirika might be, it was doubtful that she would have been able to lead the army into victory.

The elixir went down poorly at first, with Ephraim coughing up more of the substance than he took in (which was bad in itself, since the coughing merely broke open raw burns and caused a very obvious cry of anguish to pass his lips). Eventually, though, he finished off half of the vial, and his eyes blinked open very groggily and slowly. There was something different in his eyes, Natasha noted, but she could not say what.

"Where . . .?" he questioned, sounding like no more than an ill child. Battle-hardened war might have made him, and brilliant as he was, Natasha was suddenly struck very hard by how young her liege was. Why, Ephraim and Eirika could certainly be no older than Natasha's eighteen years, and yet both the twins had survived more than some men could have with nearly twice those years under his belt. Truly, that was a testament of their will, and proof no better commanders could have graced the Renaitian army.

"Be still or your wounds will reopen," Moulder said, though ease was evident in his words as well. The simple fact that Ephraim was speaking, never mind alive and breathing, was nothing but an intervention by God himself. A slight frown creased Ephraim's bandaged face, and mingled in his countenance was fear.

"Wounds . . .? What wounds?"

"From the fire you fell into," Eirika choked, wrapping her fingers around her twin's hand again. The bracelet on Eirika's wrist sparkled enigmatically, the relief of crescent moons upon the golden surface dancing in the faint sunlight, "Don't you remember Ephraim?"

". . . No." He pressed one hand on the surface of the cot and, very gingerly and very slowly, tried to push himself up into a sitting position. Every move he made seemed to cause him great torment, if the expression in his eyes was anything to go by. He fell back down, breathing heavily, blood oozing through the many layers of bandages around him.

Natasha felt a frown crease her features as she looked into Prince Ephraim's eyes. What was different about his azure eyes?

Yes, there was the pain there, and yes there were the effects of three days of fevered bed rest present, but there was also the unmistakable look of terror and of utmost confusion. Could he really not recall that he had fallen into those flames of sulfur and heat? Natasha would have bet her life (she was spending far too much time around Joshua, she mused, if she was using that analogy) that the memory of such an event would have been carved into his conscious mind for all eternity.

"You shouldn't move!" Eirika practically screamed, standing and pressing a hand delicately on his shoulder to ease him back into a sleeping position, although it did him more bad than good, "You'll just hurt yourself some more! Just rest, alright? It's best for you!" Hysterics had entered into her voice and Seth grabbed Eirika's shoulders. Immediately, the princess fell limp in his arms, and whatever words she tried to speak had become lost into a tangle of sobs and grieving babble.

". . . Please don't cry," he said weakly, albeit distantly. Awkwardly, he tried to pat Eirika on the back but couldn't. Maybe it was because of the sharp pain it brought to his arm and upper body, and but Natasha thought it was because pure hesitation. As if, some mental hold kept him from consoling his own sister.

"Princess Eirika, perhaps you should go and rest," Seth interjected, breaking his string of silence. Eirika gave him a frigid glare that could have curdled milk, yet it was Ephraim who spoke next, in a voice of surprise.

"Princess?!"

His face twisted and his breath caught in his throat. As his fingers curled into a tight fist, he fell backwards, uttering a sharp cry rather uncharacteristically of himself. Natasha did not want to know how much pain it took to get Ephraim to yell like that. She grabbed another flask of healing liquid. This one – with a large amount of chamomile and the same arcane magic used in staffs – should put him in a decent, soothing sleep (and help speed his healing skin, of course).

Eirika lunged to grab her brother but – with a look from Moulder that obviously said it was a bad idea – Seth pulled her back. Again, his touch seemed to cripple her, and she fought hard to keep the hot tears from cascading across her cheeks. He put her face in her hands, sobbing, broken utterly.

Natasha hurried to Ephraim's side, watching as his eyes glazed over, grounding his teeth as his fever spiked. It was uncommon for such a thing to happen, but she had seen a sickness (consumption, she recalled) sink its talons into a human just as fast – when she had been an apprentice in the beautiful cathedral at Grado's capital.

Natasha tried not to remember that the man it had occurred to had been the first death she had ever seen.

"Please," he begged in a rasping wheeze, his voice cracking and shivering. Again, Natasha could see the faint helplessness in his eyes – the abstract conglomeration of confusion, of pain, and of looks of a scared young man who looked younger in sickness. "Please tell me . . . where am I? Please, can you tell me, who you all are?"

She nearly dropped the elixir as her fingers froze. Natasha, her heart racing, shot a look towards Eirika and Seth, very glad that the screaming and crying Eirika had not heard her twin utter those words. How the young princess would have accepted such, when they had come so far . . . the poor girl would have been destroyed. Her brother did not recognize their faces, had to question his own twin for her identity.

Swallowing a mouthful of unpleasantly tasting bile, Natasha leaned down by Ephraim's side. She hastily whispered to him a question she had never hoped to ask, especially now with the fate of Magval and Renais hanging in the balance, "Milord . . . do you remember your own name?"

Of all the responses Natasha had expected to receive – ranging from the good, to the bad – the answer that she got was not among them. His breathless words caused her fingers to freeze and the flask to smash on the hard forest ground, and for Natasha to bring her hands up to her mouth in a strangled yelp of fear.

"E-Eliwood . . . of Pherae . . ."

* * *

Scene II:

Mirror World

* * *

Everything was distorted, fragmented like pieces from a cathedral's window. Colors moved sluggishly, yet light danced lithely before his blurred vision. The air – thicker and colder than it should have been – stung against his eyes, and every breath he took burned in his lungs horrifically. Weightlessness overtook him, and again the clenching talon of fear clamped over his heart. Was he falling again? How did that even work, when he was already pinned to the ground, half-dead from blood loss by now (unless his sense of time had been distorted by everything else)?

Roy shut his eyes and, although they felt much better shut, they still burned as though something were caught within them. His thoughts were muddled and disjointed, though all had a common tone to them. Was this death? It was oddly serene and peaceful for the afterlife of a general. The only troubling thing was his aching head. Everything thudded painfully inside his skull. A single thought was caused him great pain, although he would ignore the pain, continuously thinking of the situation.

_To surrender logic and thought makes man no difference from beast. _

Cecilia had once told that to him, when he had been about eleven years old and rather impatient with the constant reviewing of Etrurian battle techniques that he had found extremely boring at the time. Even though now, he could not summon how that conversation had turned from strategy to thought, he recalled vividly (strangely enough) the sight of Cecilia in her white and violet armor, standing with a stern look in her eye as she spoke those words.

Funny what one could recall at times.

Dimly, he could only wonder what was to become of him and of Lycia's (neigh, Elibe's) fate. Had he been able to, he probably would have given a biting laugh. Even when he was dead, all he could think about was the war . . .

He jerked suddenly and pulled his eyes apart. Something flesh-colored was holding onto his wrist tightly. It took him far too long to realize they were fingers pulling him upwards. There was a long moment where he focused ahead, and saw a green- and flesh-colored mass pulling him up, through something thick and heavy . . . water. He was underwater. The realization – one which he could summon no proper explanation for without resorting to the word '_magic' _– made him jerk, open his mouth, and swallow too much water that was healthy.

Whoever was guiding him through the water pulled harder and kicked frantically. Their grip on Roy's arm tightened, digging tightly. He felt fingernails pierce into his skin to the point where they may have drawn blood. He fancied that his underwater savior was a girl, but the way the nails dug deep.

Cold air broke across his face. Roy inhaled a deep breath (a clean, crisp, oddly metallic breath) and immediately broke into a string of coughs. Before his eyes could catch a glimpse of the world, he dove half-under. He couldn't swim very well, even under the best of conditions, and especially not when his lungs were half full of water and his mind utterly clogged by it. Whoever had pulled him from the depths of the river pulled him further, towards the side of something very unnatural, but sturdy. He latched on, sputtering for air, breathing heavy and mopping hair out of his eyes.

As his vision cleared rapidly, he found his eyes looking at midnight-colored tiles covered in a drying coat of sanguine paint. His hands were pale, oddly blue from the blood running in his veins, and he was dripping wet. He spat out a mouthful of warm water, mingled with blood and bile, his mind barely processing one question. Exactly when had he been submerged? Roy hadn't fallen into a river, so the obvious answer was that somebody had dragged him into one . . . but whom, and how did that explain the tiles?

His savior pulled herself out of the water, collapsing onto the tiles. She was tall, quite tan, but both her ponytail of hair and clothing (Sacaen, he recognized by the similarities to Sue's tribal garb) were sopping wet. Her face was pale as pale could be.

"Eliwood!" she gasped, pulling him up by the arm onto the tiles, "Eliwood, can you hear me? Are you alright?"

"Somebody with a staff get the hell over here!" a man shouted in almost a snarl, but fueled by sharp panic. Roy blinked groggily, still coughing out the last mouthful of water and blood, and looked up at the world around him instead of on the ground. His hands were smeared with blood and bodily fluids common to the dead or dying.

An intricate design of weaving aqueducts and arcane fixtures met his gaze, such as the grand cerulean and indigo mosaic of a water goddess from before the Scouring. Corpses garbed in various, but similar, black uniforms littered the water's surfaces and the man-made routes, and a small crowd of people gathered over him. His eyes descended, and landed on the heavy-breathing Sacaen woman. She had seen a great deal of battle; he could see it in the premature lines of stress and the scars on her arms and face.

Something about her panic-stricken face reminded him of someone Roy had known as a child. Vaguely, he thought she looked like a friend of his father's – Lina or. . . Lyn, that was it. She looked a bit Lyn of the Kutolah. If he recalled correctly, she had perished in Bern's first strike against Sacae, defending Bulgar. There had been some trouble with her funeral services, Roy recalled absently, since she was of Caelin's royal family. Perhaps this woman was Lyn's daughter.

Why, though, had she called out his father's name?

Roy opened his mouth to say something, but the brief inhale of breath seemed to intensify the effects of his extended stay under the canal. He doubled over, coughing furiously, his footing slipping in a puddle of water and blood. An iron-clad hand grabbed his upper shoulder tightly and pulled Roy to his feet. Without the hand on his shoulder, Roy was certain he would have collapsed and fallen unconscious. Instead, however, his head swam and his thoughts melded together unpleasantly.

"Can you breathe?" another voice asked him. Blearily, Roy looked towards the speaker. The simple movement of his head made it spin, shapes and shades transforming into one giant blob. When the mass cleared, Roy felt what little blood there was in his face flee instantly. For a long time, he wondered if he had surrendered logical thought

At nearly half the age he had been when General Narshen had executed him (since no other term fit the sad way he had perished), Marquess Hector of Ostia stared down at Roy. There was only a little difference in height, when Roy knew damn well his father's eldest friend and Roy's own pseudo-uncle had been a head and a half taller. The young, clean-shaven man was garbed in battle-scarred armor, much like the warrior he should have died as, rather than a prisoner in his own homeland, clutching a massive axe, an expression of comingled fear and worry fading from his face and eyes.

The Sacaen girl (maybe she was Lyn, considered Roy lamely) glared, not out of true anger, but of something more akin to guilt. "Of course he can't! He can't take more than a breath before coughing, can't you listen?"

Hector narrowed his eyes furiously, leaving go of Roy's arm and shouldering his axe threateningly. Roy half collapsed, and remained standing only through sheer willpower that hurt like high heaven. "Perhaps you shouldn't have gotten yourself bewitched then," he said in a low voice, "Or paid more attention!"

Her face faltered and her eyes widened. For a moment, she did look indeed like a terrified girl her age, but the expression did not last long. A hated countenance doused her angular features and she lunged for the slender sword scabbard on the floor. She had half of the katana drawn out, revealing a sliver of the magnificent, eldritch silver blade. The glimmer nearly blinded Roy. However, her gloved grip eased when a third voice (the one who had called for somebody with a staff, Roy recognized) snarled out in a half-fury, "Shut it both of you and let him clear his head!"

Roy shut his eyes to try and think. His breathing was even and natural now, the water expelled from his chest. The beginnings of rational thought were returning to him, and he dwelled on them. So far, he could happily conclude a few things.

One – he wasn't dead. Although he was no true expert on the subject, he was quite sure that he wouldn't be feeling quite this cold and miserable if he were dead – or still have a corporal form, for that matter. Gentle and pious Ellen had once spoken in the company of Roy and Princess Guinevere about Elimine's teachings, that death released the soul. If that was much for the young general to follow, than certainly he should not have stood so solidly on the tiles surrounding the temple canal.

Two – while he wasn't dead, certain things had been greatly wronged. Why was the late Lord Hector here, looking not even twenty? Was the Sacaen girl, then, Lyn who had also been claimed by a Bernese siege? The only logically possible thought that surfaced was not logical at all; involving magic he knew didn't exist. He dismissed it when he inhaled a deep, soothing breath that felt like ecstasy.

Three – he had left the Lycian Army in a bad, fatal position against General Murdock. Not knowing if he was dead or not, Roy doubted they would be able to pull off a victory. Cecilia's grim set eyes and cleverly worded report surfaced to his memory. Cecilia and her fellows, alongside Marcus, Dayan, and Yuuno, would be awaiting his orders, which would not be able to come. Panic would arise, and panic – in the middle of a siege they were already faring poorly in – was the last thing they needed.

Four – the girl had called and questioned if Eliwood, his father, had been able to hear her. Did that mean that his father was nearby? No, that wasn't possible. The guard at Pherae's capitol would have immediately set out for Roy if the Marquess had recovered enough to leave, and that, with consumption, was impossible.

Again, that utterly, utterly impossible explanation grazed his consciousness. It came for no more than a second, and he shook it from his mind immediately.

"Eliwood?"

Roy opened his eyes involuntarily as a shiver overtook his water logged body. The third man and second speaker, garbed in a sweeping emerald cloak that stood out against his otherwise unremarkable appearance, looked at him intently. The summons troubled him. Had the cloaked man mistaken Roy for his father? From a painting of the Marquess at his coronation, Roy vaguely knew that they shared great physical similarities, but to be mistaken for him was rather insulting.

Why, however, would he be mistaken for a man, no matter how much blood they shared, who had been wrecked by illness, grief, and two decades of dealing with a political nightmare of sharing a border with warmongering Bern?

"I'm sorry," Roy said, his voice barely audible and frighteningly weak. It hurt to talk, and it seemed to rob him of the little energy he had. His head, thankfully, remained clear. "You have me mistaken."

The young man in green furrowed his brows angrily, and both the Sacaen girl and axe-man – Lyn and Hector, he might as well assume, considering their frighteningly eerie similarities – looked at him. Which emotion was more prominent in their eyes – confusion or shock – Roy couldn't quite tell which.

"What exactly do you mean," Hector asked slowly, as if speaking to a child, his brow knitting angrily, "That we're mistaken? You're Eliwood, you know that, right, or did Lyn knock more out of you thank just your breath?"

For the third time now, that improbable idea re-entered into his consciousness. It thudded in his temples and robbed him of any other coherent thought. With a breath that failed to clear his head, he choked down that and a mouthful of bile that tasted far more like water and said; "I'm not Eliwood," (He felt rather odd to be using his father's first name); "I'm his son, Roy. Don't you remember . . .?" The effect of the simple words were not pleasant, to say the least.

The man in the cloak paled significantly and turned on his heels. "PRISCILLA!" he shouted at the top of his voice, the words echoing impossibly in the cavernous temple full of corpses, marching towards the heart of a synthetic isle, "PRISCILLA, GET OVER HERE!"

"What do you mean, you're Eliwood's son?" Hector asked, starring at Roy as if he had grown a second head. Lyn ran her gloved hand distractedly through her half-done ponytail. Her face had gone a marvelously, unreadable blank. No conceivable emotion seemed to fit her feelings, he supposed. "That . . . doesn't make a lick of sense . . ." Something else seemed to appear in thoughts, and he fell silent, an odd expression clouding his face.

That improbable idea that had surfaced in the back of his mind now seemed less improbable, more logical, but still . . . lunatic. Roy turned around and knelt down by the water so that his eyes could look at the rippling surface of the manmade river. His legs collapsed almost instantly beneath him, his fingernails scraping painfully loud against the tiles. He stared into the murky depths of the canal water. It was hard to make out much from the various streams of buoyant fluids floating on the top and the lack of decent lighting, but the bits of a reflection that stared back up at him were enough for the picture to be complete.

He could make out certain parts of _his_ appearance – the vermilion of hair, a familial trait of Pheraen nobility, and the bright blue of the eyes, the oval chin and straight nose. Yet, it was if Roy were looking into a portrait of himself with a great many details wrong. He was certainly not as old as this reflection suggested (the person in the water had to be at least three years Roy's senior) and his face was not nearly as narrow, his eyes not as thin.

Roy recalled the magnificent portrait of young Lord Eliwood and his sickly bride that hung in a corridor that the marquess did not frequently visit (perhaps because of the painting). His father had been eighteen when it had been commissioned, just married to a beautiful but enigmatic maiden and named to the Lycian League. He thought of his father's face in that portrait, and he looked back at his veiled reflection in the water.

It was his father's youthful appearance looking up at him as his reflection.

"That can't be . . ."

His voice was even weaker than it had been before. Roy traced his fingers through his hair (or was it even his, though he controlled the body?). He shut his eyes, trying to clear his head and calm his heart. Logic mocked him, dancing out of his reach as he grabbed for _something _to explain why he looked _exactly _like his father did when he was eighteen. The world would not let him simply ponder the situation, unfortunately, as the man in the emerald cloak spoke again.

"You claim you are Eliwood's son . . ." he said, almost if not believing the words were passing his lips, "And yet I'm looking at the same man I've been employed by for the last year . . ."

Roy said nothing, for he could think of nothing to say himself. He shut his eyes and inhaled several deep, calming breaths. He clambered back to his feet, pulling his arms tight to his chest for warmth and stability. When he opened his eyes, he looked at his hands. There were the calluses of a seasoned swordfighter (a fencer, judging by the scars from a knuckle guard) on the palm, but they were on the left hand instead of the right. His father had been left-handed, he remembered, because he had had such a hard time teaching Roy to wield a sword.

Clicking metal sounded – the distinct screech of horseshoes on man-made ground. Roy somehow managed to snap from the grabbing claws of his thoughts to spot a scarlet haired young woman ride up to them on the back of a chestnut mare. Her face was an odd combination of flushed and fearful pale, her hands tightly gripped upon a gilded healing staff. There was something about her face that looked familiar, though he supposed it was better if he could not recall. The last thing he needed was more confusion.

He shivered violently, though he doubted it was due to cold.

"Ah, Priscilla," the emerald-cloaked man said, looking at the horseback woman. His tone was rather sarcastic. "Please enlighten me. Exactly how long would it take a man to get lasting damage from being underwater?" She turned to look at Roy, confusion in her green eyes, but couldn't say a word.

Lyn strode forward. She stood much taller than the man in the cloak, not because she was particularly tall, but because the thin man was exceptionally short. Her eyes were blazing, matching his gaze. "That's the first thing you jump to? That nearly drowning made him insane! You're a man of logic, Mark, and even I know that only roots can cause a man madness, not water!"

Roy balled his hands into tight fists as he tried to relieve some of the pain pounding in his temples. Summoning all the energy that fatigue and confusion had not robbed from him, he said in a firm voice, "I'm not a liar. I can't even try to explain how I've gotten here, but I am Roy of Pherae."

"Prove it," the man said, a sardonic smirk crossing his face. Roy could not help but scowl, although impressed. The man was intelligent. He knew that Roy had no proof to back up his claim except his word – which was unsupported, but explained by insanity.

"If I may interject . . ." The scarlet haired lady on a mare, Priscilla she had been named, spoke weakly. Her voice carried a heavy Etrurian accent with it, of the eastern half, close to Lycia. She looked at Roy strangely, a sort of faraway expression in her eyes. He saw her fingers inch towards a red-covered tome strapped to her side, for comfort he guessed (since his feeling of sinking dread failed to clench his heart). "Perhaps we might be able to consult the matter with Count Wrigley? He would be able to shed some light onto this confusion."

Wrigley . . . That was the territory the Archery Lieutenant Klein reigned over in Etruria, inherited from his father. If Roy knew enough of Etrurian aristocracy correctly, the aging Count Pent was a well-known eccentric and scholar. Roy never remembered his father mentioning a connection to the man, though he had been far too busy during Roy's life with the border and internal affairs preceding the war. Nevertheless, he might get some sort of answer.

Before Roy could follow the man called Mark and Priscilla (who still gave him a curious, calming look), he was pulled back by Hector. The Ostian had a strange expression on his face, and his question was equally as strange, spoken in a low whisper. He had been quiet the whole time. Lyn lingered backwards to, a funny but blank look in her gaze, a limp in her walk from a nasty cut.

"What's my daughter's name?" Hector's question did not echo, and it did not sound as though it had come from the deep-voiced man. He looked a tad unnerved he had even asked the question, but remained standing and holding his axe firmly, tightly for some consolation the heavy mass of silver and steel gave to him. Roy blinked at the question. How could he possibly ask such a thing, if Roy were in the past, before either Hector or his father had met their brides?

"Lilina," he answered honestly. He tried not to think about his poor, dear friend, fighting four to one and winning with a constant sting of magic in the air. He also tried to ignore that cruel reminder that it had been her Aircalibur spell that had sent him flying through the air.

Hector said nothing. As if lost in his thoughts (and a tad disturbed by them, if Roy saw his face correctly), he walked down the serpentine routes of tile. Roy ran both his hands through his hair and shivered slightly as he touched the golden diadem around his brow. His head was swimming with questions, curiosity, and a demand for answers that would barely come unless divinity appeared before Roy at this very moment.

By some arcane, impossible thing, Roy stood now, nearly two decades into the past. He was fighting in a war he had only heard about from General Marcus and his father, the conflict's true origins a mystery none truly wished to recount but had served no international disgrace. For the moment, he was essentially his own father –

The thought of even trying to figure out the paradox made his head swim and his shoulders shake with a mixture of various things. His composure was cracked by disturbance he had not felt so acutely since seeing a Mamkute for the first time.

* * *

Scene III:

The Tempter

* * *

"You heard of that damn decision of theirs," a cold voice spat out. Its owner paced the floors in a fury. A long cape of gilded scarlet fluttered with every movement like a shroud, obscuring his shadow on the golden floor. Intently, he nodded as his master continued ranting in a fervor spurned by a feeling of misplaced vengeance. "The Marshal gets to retake his kingdom first! The Marshal, pah! That worthless hunk of a half-man could barely register a thing if it weren't for their conniving words hissing in his ear, he'd be content with sitting around in that cesspool he calls a home with bones in his mouth like a dog, he'd – !"

"Your Majesty," the servant interjected, toying with the notion of dying now by his master's angry hand, "If I may be so brave as to interject an idea."

"Bah, what do you know you uncouth peasant?" The King's lips curled unpleasantly. He set himself down in his encrusted throne, taking from his side a cup full of wine. He didn't drink a drop but held the goblet in his hand, savoring the smell of the drink. The servant had heard billions of times that the vintage was rare and the bottle expensive, and was glad The King was in too foul a mood to elaborate.

"I know nothing, Your Majesty," the servant reiterated hastily, sweeping back his sandy hair, "I'm but a lowly servant to your lordly presence. I merely have an idea that might serve to your aim."

"Then speak before your garish presence burns a hole through my head. By God himself, you wreak of poverty and illness, dressed in rags fit for something so vile you might as well serve beneath that sluggard Kaiser." He inhaled his wine with a pleasant smile, whilst his vassal kept a smile plastered on his face somehow. If his creation had not been so cruel, _maybe _he could have served a better master.

_At least The Kaiser doesn't bark to every woman she resembles a whore, _the servant hissed coldly in his mind.

"The Dante merely picked The Marshal first, correct? There was never any proper documentation drawn up to bind Your Majesty to her decision, right?"

The King set down his goblet of fine vintage wine and stood back up. His heavy armor, leafed with gold and trimmed with platinum that was too garishly decadent for the servant's taste in this life or the next, clinked with every movement, and his oversized crown slipped back down his head a tad. It was too full of gems to be humanly possible to craft, but the sandy-haired servant kept a ready smile on his lips. If he let it drop even the slightest bit it would be his head mounted along the wall where The King's former game sat.

"I owe too much of my grand wealth to that whorish Dante to risk it by breaking her word, you insignificant creature. I'd rather get another to bask in their idiocy and risk their inheritance than do my own." His words slowed to a halt. A manic glint of joy fluttered into his small eyes, a stupid grin slipping from ear to ear. The King snapped his fingers and marched down the velvet-carpeted hall. "Idiot boy, follow me and memorize what I say. I want to hear it repeated when I'm done."

The servant stood up straighter, wishing that a proud look didn't fill his eyes. The last of The King's men who had looked too arrogant and obnoxious had been silenced and now hung like a moving cadaver through the corridors of the Keep. He was sure never to look too prideful again, for certain. He followed behind The King's long train of a velvet and mink cape, which extended for several feet behind The King's impressive girth (none of it fat, for some wasteful magic had made sure of that).

"I need The Vizer's way with words. That harlot will do anything for a taste of a fine life and flesh and I won't have to compromise my gracious honor with a thing. I will need to send somebody with an appearance that will suit her tastes – which mean any peasant with a lustful eye will do, yes. She can tempt those other fools into doing whatever she pleases, whatever _I_ please . . . You, repeat what I said."

The servant stuttered a little first, but repeated everything The King had said verbatim. He matched every enunciation and pause perfectly, although there had not been very much to memorize and plenty of time to do so. The King spoke slowly, always enjoying the rich sound of his own voice when he spoke. Each word the sandy-haired servant mimicked with accuracy caused The King's smile to widen further.

_His Majesty can be a prideful bastard, but I can't_, thought the servant when he had finished and pulled his ragged red cloak tighter towards him.

"Send something to The Vizer – I don't properly care which inbred hick you send to her side, so long as he can repeat the message that she must _fully and utterly _cooperate with me, and I shall give to her anything her heart desires. Why, she can have that pretty little soldier that her imposter stole from her, for all I rightly care. That one thought mind of hers would be content with anything that slathers her with compliments, she doesn't care about the gold and honor that she lost. If she gives to me that she can have all the men in the world to compliment her!"

The servant felt his lips tighten, the smile still on his face but it thinned signifigantly. The Vizer may have been a lustful waste of space as compared to the greedy King he was forced to serve continually and loyally to, but she was not as bad as he spoke of her. He decided to quell the annoying reminder that he had never served beneath her, and thus spoke in her defense only to spite The King.

"Of course, Your Majesty. Whom shall I send to her?"

The King, however, had gone from his servant's side without salutations. The servant, however, was quite glad. He'd always very much despised serving beneath that avarice-ridden piece of filth, but supposed it could be worse. Why, he could be corporal, having to serve under some idiot man in a war where he would cease to exist.

With that disturbing thought in mind, he pulled his crimson cloak tighter to him for warmth.

* * *

Disclaimer:

I do not own Fire Emblem, as the series is copyrighted to the good people of Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. I also do not own the opening quote; it is a belonging of the mind of sir Friedrich Nietzsche. However, I do own this story, and all original characters within it.

Author's Note:

Yay more major editing.

It's still much too short for my liking, but any longer and I probably would have come up with something subpar. Particularly the new last segment, which replaces something I greatly disliked due to my dislike for Mab's character in general (plotting out the story made her into a Mary Sue, so she did have to go. No grave trouble).

I wasn't able to find if tepezcohuite and comfrey grow anywhere remotely near each other or any place that would be similar to Renais. However, they were the only two herbal treatments for burns that I could find and so they'll have to do, to my distaste.

I only hope Roy's reaction didn't seem too, well, unrealistic. I had a friend of mine look the previous one over and I got the response that Roy seemed like a "blathering moron". So, hopefully this one is much better. One can only hope.

As always, reviews are appreciated. I like criticism – so long as it's constructive. Flames will be used to burn my hideous Chemistry paper.

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(Because I know you care)

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	3. Battle Scars

* * *

_Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today._

_**The Stray Children of Light and Sorrow**_

Written By:

Perenelle Windsor

* * *

Act III:

Battle Scars

* * *

Scene I:

Black Forest

* * *

Something smelled like death. Not in the metaphorical sense, in the literal sense. Even in a half-conscious state, Ephraim could smell something that was a black mixture of rotten wood, blood, and very close, very fresh corpses. He gagged, every inhale another breath of that concoction that burned as it filled his lungs – much like sulfurous, magic-induced smoke.

Why, though, did that . . . stench . . . fill his lungs and not the smoke? Why was the fire gone, as he noticed when he opened his eyes? Ephraim struggled to pull his mind awake and focus it. It was slow and painful process, with every thought a struggle to achieve. Yet a voice in the back of his mind (one that had saved him a number of times all throughout his life) was screaming at him to get up and make good use of the adrenaline thundering through his system.

Ephraim made his eyes work, forcing every bit of his will to come out of its stupor. He pushed his hands behind him, treating his ears to the horrid, squelching sound of fingers being pulled deep, down into muck. Confusion thudded through his pounding skull, mingling with the screaming voice telling him that if he didn't move fast, he was dead.

"Damnit," he snarled, trying to pull his arms out of the ground and failing desperately. The mud clawed at him, pulling him down into its depths. Ephraim felt something wriggle between his fingers, cold and slimy, and very much alive. His eyes widened, though the whole of his vision was taken up by something dark and scratchy – something that smelt of ash and oak. It must have been a tree that the fire had brought down, and it might have been the only reason that Ephraim was alive now.

Fingers, small and thin but not feminine, gripped his shoulder suddenly. Shock pounded into his head and he struggled against the grip purely by reflex. There was a scream above him that reverberated in his ears, and the fingers pulled harder, adding another hand to their endeavor. The mud, though, pulled him back down, not wanting to lose its prey. The tree branches directly above him bit into his face, the ground pulling so fiercely at him that it almost felt that his shoulder would be dislodged.

He kept his tongue between his teeth, his breathing as calm as he could make it. Half his left arm was gone from the mud, which refused to escape his skin when he attempted to shake it off. Yet something else averted his attention.

His left arm was unhurt, but his right arm . . . was twisted, and snapped nearly in two. His eyes widened and his breath hitched. He couldn't even bend his fingers . . . and what was more, his fingers looked thicker, tanner, more calloused than they were supposed to be.

"Is he alive?" The voice was panicked, furiously frightened, and fought to keep composure.

Whoever was helping him get out of the mud pulled harder, gripping his shoulders tighter with a great scrape against the tree. With his good arm, Ephraim pushed deep against the ground, struggling for something to grip onto and pull himself up by. He gripped a rock and pulled, dragging a lower body that was as much dead weight as his right arm. He and his mystery aid got him loose enough from the tree (which he saw had not been burned any time during Ephraim's life) so that he could see the sky.

The faint trace of stars could be seen, blinking in and out through a crown of trees.

With a sick lurch, the memory of his near-death came back to him. Along with it came the return of the feeling of the flames. The horrible torture of the sulfurous fire licking at his flesh, and Ephraim shut his eyes tightly until the feeling that was no more than a memory passed and he was left breathing heavy on the hard ground.

"That's all I can do . . ."

Ephraim's eyes snapped open at once. He sat up, his back cracking and skull throbbing, and found himself staring at the panicked face of a redheaded man and a younger boy with gleaming crimson eyes looked down at Ephraim. He had never seen either of them before in his life, yet both stared at him with concern born of familiarity in their eyes. While Ephraim didn't know them, they certainly knew him.

"Are you alright?" the redhead asked, his accent foreign and voice unfamiliar. Ephraim had just opened his mouth, although he didn't know whether or not he should answer the man's question or ask one of his own. His thoughts were soon interrupted by the frenzy cry from a female voice of, "Look out!"

Ephraim stumbled quickly to his feet in time to avoid being impaled with a sword jabbed straight towards his heart. The soldier with the blade was garbed in armor very different from that which the Grado Army wore, and the man wasted no time in going after Ephraim once he wrenched his sword from the earth. Even as Ephraim dodged the soldier, fiery, all consuming pain shot from his left leg, and it took one glance down to figure out why.

It was twisted, broken for sure like his arm, and a huge gash infected with minute to large splinters had torn apart his pants and flesh. His arms, likewise, were covered in scratches, and it looked like some of his fingers were broken, though the worst of the pain had been numbed by the healer. He noticed, too, he was clad in clothing very different than what he had been wearing when he fell into the fire . . . clothing stained with blood and mud and God knows what else.

What the hell was going on?

The question sounded over his other thoughts as he dodged the various sword swings, his panicked eyes looking for his lance – or just one he could use since if Reginleif was gone. His ears caught the sound of an incantation, quick and whispered words that formed a portion of a magical spell. The mantras spoken were distinctly different from any Ephraim had ever heard before, and he shot a glare sideways. The sickly boy with the scarlet eyes, the one who had helped pull Ephraim out of the mud, had an Anima tome balanced on the base of his hand.

"Elwind!" he shouted, and a vicious gale blew blood up onto Ephraim's face. He stumbled backwards, grinding his teeth together as he put too much pressure on his broken leg, and watched as the magical winds tore into the soldier's flesh, and left him as a dismembered corpse on the soggy earth. Ephraim had seen a lot of men die, and seen a lot of ways that men could die. He'd never had the misfortunate of watching _air_ kill somebody.

Swallowing painfully, Ephraim ran a hand distractedly through his hair, to find it longer and more unruly then before. The thought sent a shiver throughout his entire body, and further pain to his broken leg. As bizarre as it sounded in his own mind, he didn't seem to be . . . himself, or at least a version of him that had been changed in more ways than was subtle.

"Can you walk?"

The question hit him hard and fast. Dazed for a moment, Ephraim looked at the pale face of the redheaded man. He was garbed in white and held both a physic staff and a book bound in white leather; he was a priest, but the garb was dissimilar to the robes of one of the Everlasting's ministers. Tentatively, Ephraim put some weight on his injured leg, but without the adrenaline rush of a man after his throat, the pain was blinding.

"No," he answered, disturbed by the sound of his own voice. The accent was thicker and heavier, the word courser. Trying to see if he could place a country to the accent, he looked at the redhead and continued, "No, I don't think so."

Ephraim saw the black-haired boy narrow his cold eyes and take several steps forward. The prince's eyes traveled from the mage's eyes to the stigma on his brow – an odd symbol that, while blood-red, seemed to be a birthmark. The mage spoke to the priest, even though he kept his eyes locked on Ephraim's face, examining it intently.

"Get to Boyd," the boy said with the authority of a tactician, "If what Ike said was true and he is poisoned, he'll need your attention more."

The priest, after giving Ephraim one last look, nodded and hurried away. Ephraim watched him leave, but found himself examining the fighting around him more intensely. The sight of bloodshed and battle was bitterly familiar to him, although he did not recognize the combatants on either side. He saw a young woman mounted atop a Pegasus swoop down and impale an archer that had been aiming to cripple her beautiful stead, and a man in indigo cut down the soldiers with a katana that moved like lightning, and . . .

Ephraim saw a man as thick with muscle as the prince was tall, with a beast's powerful claws topping his fingertips pull an arrow from his shoulder as though it were nothing, and crush it to powder in his palms. He saw a hawk – larger than any bird that ever sailed the skies over Magval – swoop down and pick out the weakest soldier in a group with a human-like intellect bubbling in its liquid eyes.

"It seems to me that your leg is not the only thing that's injured."

He turned back to face the black-clad mage. The boy's crimson eyes were unnerving as they continued to stare him down, even though he was several inches shorter than Ephraim. His eyes, too, seemed keener than those of a boy his age and, strangely, Ephraim thought of the looks that Myrrh fixed him with.

"What do you mean?" Ephraim asked, pain entering his voice as he leaned on his injured leg. He wondered how extensive the damage to it really was.

The mage's eyes darkened further, and his pale fingers closed around the spine of his tome. "Give me your name," he said, and his voice was frigid. The words in his shut book glowed ethereally. Ephraim shut his eyes for a moment, wincing as he felt his right leg cramping from putting all his weight upon it. The voice in the back of his mind told him that the mage would not be expecting Ephraim's name (especially considering everything of his appearance that he could see did not belong to him), and if the boy was prepared to fight, Ephraim would most definitely loose.

"I'm not sure," he said slowly. He remembered, once, in a conversation with General Drussel, the elder man had spoken about how a mercenary captain had wiggled his way out of enemy hands by feigning amnesia. Ephraim only wondered if the same approach would work for him.

His word's effect probably would have been the same as if Ephraim had spat in his face. The young mage's face twisted into an expression that briefly appeared like hurt before settling into composed anger. He turned around briskly, his long tails of hair snapping behind him, and started eastward.

Without casting so much as a glance at Ephraim, he said, blandly; "Rhys will be able to treat you once he's done with Boyd. Then just stay at the ruins. I'll serve as the guard." After a pause where Ephraim braced himself and started hobbling pathetically after the mage, the boy said, "Soren."

"What?"

"My name is Soren." He seemed to be expecting a response but, when Ephraim did not give any, he fell quiet. That left Ephraim to dwell in his own thoughts, which were frequently punctuated by sharp agony lacing its way through his body from his leg. He examined his hands, taking note of the weathered skin, bloody from cuts from sharp tree branches and the wind Soren had summoned earlier. His clothing was shabby and patched, the sleeves rolled up enough to reveal a series of white scars and a swordsman's knotted muscles, so vastly different from a lanceman's physique that Ephraim's stomach plummeted.

How had this happened, how by the Everlasting had Ephraim lost his body and gotten this one? Had he been reincarnated – never mind how odd the notion sounded, and blasphemous to the teachings of Saint Latona? If so, why did he maintain all his memories of his parents and Eirika, of his old life, and none of this new one? Was it magic, some ethereal power that had granted him a second life, or something more sinister at work?

He was no philosopher or theologian, and had done his best to steer clear of that foggy warzone, so all the questions did was make his head ache and his leg and arm throb in pain.

All the same . . . inquiries and reflections aside, Ephraim knew for certain the flesh he now controlled was not his. That mere conclusion was enough to draw all the blood from his face, and set a cold, numb shroud over him.

"There's the commander!"

The shout drew Ephraim from his stupor – for which he was grateful. He looked up in time to see two men turn towards him and Soren, and turn to charge. Fast as could, Soren flipped open his tome and began reciting in fast tones, barely looking at the pages before him. The way that the mage hissed his spells was quite different from how Ephraim remembered hearing Lute or Ewan speak. They spoke sharper, quicker, while Soren's words seemed to flow into the next.

The incantation was halfway finished and the stenches in the air moving in a synthetic gale before Soren suddenly stopped, his words cut off by the sudden smack with the butt of a lance. His nose snapped as it broke, sending a crimson flood down his face and front.

The blinding feeling of adrenaline finally overtook the Renatian prince. Just as the soldiers turned towards him, gleeful bloodlust in their eyes, Ephraim grabbed a hold of the enemy lance by its end and shoved all his weight against it. The spearhead, which had been pointed away from Soren and Ephraim, shoved itself into the soldier's belly. As fast as he could, Ephraim spun the lance and smashed it against the second man. The point dug across his face and eyes, causing him to scream in pain as he suddenly became blind, and Ephraim let out a bellow of pain himself as the anguish from his left leg returned to him.

"Are you alright?" Ephraim snapped, not unkindly, to Soren. The mage was already onto his feet with a sleeve pressed up as a poor tourniquet to stem the flow from his shattered nose. All Ephraim received in return was a muttered reply he couldn't quite make out. Again, he asked, "Are you alright?"

"Fine."

He felt a bit better clutching the lance and, though he could not fight properly, he could at least use it as a crude walking stick to support his leg as Soren led him towards the ruined remains of what had obviously been something beautiful. Colossal chunks of white marble, scorched by fire and age, littered the ground, and the only real piece of architecture that had survived whatever horror that had scarred the place was an elegant arch. Ephraim could just make out engravings of angels in the stone.

In the shelter of the arch were three people. The redheaded priest, whom Ephraim guessed to be Rhys that Soren had spoken of, was knelt by the side of an unmoving young man weakly clutching a bloody axe and staring with wide, feverish eyes. He didn't need to know a thing about the emerald-haired young man to know he was dying a very painful death from poison, and was probably not going to make it through the remainder of the battle.

The third figure nestled in the shadows was a young girl, curled in the fetal position, either asleep or unconscious. She was probably around Ephraim's own age, or she would have been if she had been human. But she wasn't.

Beautiful golden hair covered her ivory face, but the long locks did not hide ears that were tapered to sharp points. Her tiny form was covered in a gown that looked like silk, the same color of pure white as the wings that were folded towards her flesh. Wide, beautiful, angelical wings that made her look like something that did not deserve this place.

What was she doing at this battleground? Who was she – _what_ was she? The sight of a girl with wings was not unusual to Ephraim, but this girl . . . made Myrrh, with her leathery wings, seem . . . it was different, was all his brain could pull out.

"Is she a Manakete?" he asked, unaware that the question had come from his lips in the first place. Rhys the priest looked up from the boy he was tending to, raising one scarlet eyebrow over his eyes.

"Manakete?" he asked in confusion, but turned back to his patient when the young man gave a lurch forward, his eyes wide and feverishly pale. Ephraim was no healer, but he had learned enough of medicine in the course of the war to tell when someone was seriously ill, and the boy would probably not survive much longer.

"She's a heron," Soren spoke back, casting an odd, unfriendly look down at her unconscious body, "A laguz." His tone was frigid.

Ephraim gently let himself fall onto one of the pieces of marble sticking out of the rock-hard clay of the ground, finally giving his screaming, broken leg a rest. He ran his fingers (only from his right hand, though) through his hair, all the while mulling over questions that were better left for men and women like Moulder and Lute. Blindly, he simply stared at the unmoving body of the winged girl, at the face masked by a veil sunshine-colored hair.

What had happened to him?

* * *

Scene II:

Help

* * *

"_Roy_!"

It would do anybody poorly to awaken as fast as Ike had, especially from so deep a state of unconsciousness. His eyes opened in an instant, so fast that the sunlight burnt the back of his eyes, and his head spun with the shock. With a great, sharp grimace, he felt pain siege through his neck and head. He could just barely hear his own thoughts over the staccato pounding in his temples, screaming so that he would have no peace whatsoever. He gagged for breath, breathing heavily and painfully, yet somehow he felt himself give a twisted grin.

That tree hadn't killed him. Ike was still alive.

"_Roy! Roy, can you hear me!_"

Who was that crying? Gently, Ike pulled open his eyes once more, wincing against the harshness of the sunshine. How long had he been lying on the ground as conscious as a rock if it was already midday? Against the white backdrop, Ike found that a dark silhouette was hovering over him. He strained his eyes to look at it properly. It made his head thud harder, the staccato losing its rhythm and gaining in intensity.

In a few seconds, the shapeless black form defined itself as it came closer to him. The shadow shifted into a girl, young, maybe fifteen – fourteen at least. Her face was white, and her eyes were raw red, but naturally a clear blue. More details, like the hue of her hair or her clothing, he couldn't see. Her face kept blurring before him, whenever she moved too far or too quickly, and Ike frowned darkly at the fogginess of his sight. Not a good sign.

He set his hands on the ground under him and braced himself for the sound of flesh sinking into soft mud. Instead, his fingers scraped against hard ground, and froze when they touched against a heavy layer of snow-covered pine needles. The shock made his breath quicken too fast – and made Ike's chest explode with pain that made him cry out, coughing out blood onto his chin and chest.

"What the . . ." he half swore, but speaking burned his throat and drew up more blood. He shut his mouth quickly and clenched his jaw, biting to keep the mix of blood and bile down in him. All the while, he lifted his head up (making it swim with a nauseous weakness) and looked around. The swampy remains of Serenes Forest had been transformed. The woods were evergreens or leafless, all covered in a heavy cloud of snow and the full blossom of sunlight.

His eyes traveled to something more pressing, the explanation as to why his breathing had gone from poor to an utter struggle. There was a broadsword, the blade an elegant violet color, was impaled into his chest. There was a puddle of maroon by his side – the wound was deep, but it hadn't pierced something too vital, or else he would have been dead sooner.

Ike felt his pulse halter for a moment when he saw the sword. His head pounded and collapsed back onto the soft snow ground, his breathing heavy as he scrambled for air. It was funny how his inhales seemed so much weaker now that he saw that he was wounded that badly. The black humor was far from Ike's mind as he thought of what the hell had to have occurred to slam him in this position. It was winter, yes, but it did not snow so heavily in Begnion (particularly in the west, close to warm Gallia, where Serenes fell).

His thoughts mulled, dripping slowly from one topic to another as he lay there, and settled on an interesting one; what had happened to the tree that had crushed him? Ike clearly, distinctly remembered the feeling of the wood slamming down onto his shoulder and crushing his right arm. That same limb and hand moved easily, but weakly, at his command.

A half muttered swear of confusion passed his lips, and Ike cursed louder in his head when he broke into coughing, spitting out more globs of blood.

"Please, please stop coughing!" screamed the girl, and she hovered further over Ike. Her face came into clearer focus (she was barely an inch from his face by now). He could see her long navy hair was mattered with sweat, and her blue eyes were full of utter fear. A distinct aroma surrounded her, like sulfur, but Ike had spent enough time around mages to know that it was just the residual scent of magic. The girl gripped his arms tightly and dug her nails into his skin. "Please just be alright while I go find Brother Saul! He can help you – I'm sure he c-can!" She rose, but hovered over him, trembling.

Ike's eyes widened. His heavy thoughts had vanished momentarily, filled instead with a long string of curses that he dared not risk speaking out loud. If she left now, he'd bleed to death. That was most certain, given the fact that too deep a breath brought an extreme amount of blood to his mouth. He clenched his fists tight against the ground and summoned all of his breath.

"Wait!" he managed to gasp out. Speaking even one word, however, proved to be a grave mistake. Escalating from where the painted blade pierced in his chest, pain racked his body and with it came a fit of horrible coughing. Ike tried his best not to move as he spat blood, bile, and something that felt disgustingly solid out of his throat and onto his hands. Above him, the girl stopped in her path and turned to look at him. Her face was blurred, and Ike had to strain his eyes to make out where her head ended and her neck began. However, when she screamed in fear, the sound rang very clearly in his head.

"Yes Roy!" she said, falling back to his side. She grabbed his hand tightly, holding it with both her own. Her grip was very, very cold, and shaking, "If you just stay still, I'll go and get somebody to help you! My staff was cracked, I'm . . . I'm going to go find Brother Saul! You just stay there and . . . and _don't__die_Roy!"

She couldn't leave his side. The second she left, he'd be gone too. The very last thing Ike wanted was to die a coward's death - bleeding out, unable to do a thing to save himself and impaled to the ground, not when the Black Knight still lived unpunished for killing Greil, when Crimea was still an anarchic mess, when he would have abandoned his first employer and disgraced the mercenary company.

"Wait," he wheezed out, and felt the blood slide up his throat to fill his mouth. His words were muffled and slurred, barely audible to his ears, never mind the blue haired girl's, "Pull the sword . . . pull the sword out."

"Pull it out?" she asked, her pitch shaking just as her hands were, "But . . . if I pull it out, you'll bleed to death! I remember," (she inhaled a deep, steadying breath and choked on it), "I remember, General Cecilia told me. You're supposed to keep a blade in its wound in or else they'll die, and Roy, I . . . _we'd_be lost if you died! Don't you remember; you're all we have for hope!"

Even as a second wave of coughing hit him and he seized as, when he moved to keep the blood in his mouth from spraying everywhere, the sword dug through more of his flesh, Ike realized why this girl was calling him Roy. In was an odd thought to arrive upon at that moment, but he did nevertheless. This girl had him mistaken for somebody else and – considering they were in Begnion, despite the snow – it made sense to conclude that she thought him to be someone from the Apostle's army.

His thoughts on the matter were interrupted. His body seized, his neck arching as coughing tore apart his being. The sword in his chest strummed against his internal organs and he just barely kept himself from screaming loudly. The girl gasped and held his hand tighter, yelling out something he couldn't hear.

When Ike's coughing subsided, he managed, somehow, to say to his only company, "Pull it out . . . and make a tourn -" He damned the fact he could barely take a single breath before he was off in another spree of bloody wheezing and hacking.

"Make a tourn . . . a tourniquet? Is that it; you want me to make a tourniquet?"

He nodded weakly, and brought his shaking hands up to his neck. His cape had lost about two feet of cloth during the war so far, with the makeshift bandages its fabric had been used for, and he had no qualms about using it once more. However, Ike's fingers did not slide against the knot that bound his cape around his neck and the coarse fabric of his ancestral jerkin. His fingertips touched against the chilled metal of plate armor and, beneath that, the warmth of a heavier shirt. His hand froze in place its place, falling to rest upon his chest, half due to surprise and half due to another wave of coughing from his meager movements.

Why was he in armor? He could think of no logical conclusion, nothing that made the remotest bit of sense. When he exhaled more blood than air, however, he dismissed the thoughts as best he could and felt beneath the armor for some sort of clasp or knot for a cape or a cloak. Just _something_that could be torn up to use as a tourniquet until a real healer tidied him up. His fingers found a hook, the metal clasp as cold as he was, but he had no time to try and unhook it.

Instead, Ike summoned as much strength a weak breath afforded to him and barely managed to snap it in half. It left his arm shaking, feeling terribly weak. He did not want to consider how much blood he had lost to become so exhausted from such a simple task.

"Here," he managed to say, feeling behind him to grab a handful of a fur-lined garment. It felt the same as Elincia's rabbit-fur cloak, soft and soothingly warm, velvety beneath the fur. Why he'd be decked in a regal cape, Ike hadn't a clue. It made him grimace at the vanity woven into such a simple garment. The girl grabbed the cloak, moving Ike as she did so, and he fought his hardest to keep himself from shouting. The sword was dragged through his abdomen a little further.

As the sound of tearing fabric rent the air, Ike leaned back into the ground, gripping the leaves and snow without any care to the sticky mess coating his palms. He shut his eyes. It was easier to focus on controlling his breathing and keeping his heart calm. Each inhale was a guttural wheeze, but at least air was entering his lungs. The blue-haired girl, above him, was struggling with tearing the fine material and still sobbing.

"Roy, I-I'm so sorry I c-couldn't fight . . . it's my fault . . . please, p-puh-please don't die!" But too much of her words were lost in hysterics and his attention was pulled back towards his pounding pain. And, even still, Ike fought to find something else to occupy his mind.

He thought of his father, now dead and buried by a small little castle in Gallia's wild forests. Of how when his children – younger, then, as Ike recalled a specific time when he was nine – and they had squabbled over pointless things. Greil had easily separated them and barked about how damn foolish they were being. It usually kept them from fighting. Ike grinned weakly at the memory.

He thought of his mother, whom he could barely remember, but he thought of her soft singing that Mist could duplicate with perfection. He could remember how she had smiled, cerulean hair in her face, when he was a very, very young child . . .

Ike thought of almost unnaturally warm Gallia, of dead Serenes Forest, of the dragons in Goldoa, of just anything and everything that was not the blade pinning him to the ground.

"Alright!" the girl sounded above him. Ike opened his eyes, the world spotted with globs of black, but mind still clear. The girl was a strange, clandestine beacon of navy and scarlet against the bright skyline, her frightful eyes unnaturally visible. Tears dribbled out of them, and she held her lip when she was not talking. "I'm doing to pull out the sword. Just . . . just hang on, and everything's going to be alright!"

Ike gave a nod and moved his hands to press against the place where the sword had pierced him. His fingers were shaking heavily. The cloth and skin encircling the wound were soaked in blood. He found, through the spots of clothing not soaked in blood, that his shirt had been replaced with one made of fine cotton. Ike ignored this disturbing fact again.

Even though putting pressure near the wound sent agonizing pain through his body, escalating from the point of the injury till his jaw had clenched from the pain, he held them there. Ike seized from the pain, his back arching as he fell to the side. His mouth opened, and his body was wracked with agonizing coughing that made the girl scream. He felt her grab his side and rapidly tie the shreds of the fur cape around his abdomen. He gasped for ragged breaths.

All the while, he heard her repeat the mantra stubbornly, "It's going to be alright Roy, it's going to be alright . . ."

It took a very long time for his body to calm down. The pain fluttered, fading into a numb nothing that he was grateful for. The girl clutched for his hand. "Thank you," he said, shutting his eyes and breathing as best he could.

The girl was smiling, he guessed, if the pure relief in words were must to go by. "You just hang on! I'm going to go and get General Cecilia or Brother Saul to help! Just hang in there Roy, you're going to be fine!"

Ike's stomach had knotted unpleasantly each time she mistook him for this other man. He pushed himself up, biting down on his tongue to hold back a shout of pain or violent coughing. When the girl tried to pull away, he tightened his grip on her hand. She spun back down to him. He noticed that she wore a very fine scarlet and white dress, with a golden trim and a scarlet cap in her hair. She was a noble, but in her sorrow, she did not act like one. That was good.

"Make a fire," he muttered out, "Signal them. If . . . if you leave I'll –" He coughed, spitting out globs of red and something flesh-colored onto her boots. The girl turned green and slid her hand out of his.

"R-Right! Fire, okay!" Her words had hitched back into hysterics. She sounded a bit like Mist, after Greil had died. The same hopelessness was in her words. The girl moved away from him, not far enough as to where he couldn't see her anymore, but far enough as to where her fire wouldn't make him worse than he already was. The lyrical sound of magical words – different, though, from how Soren spoke them – floated to his ears.

Between his coughs and the wheezy intake of breath, he managed to confess, "I'm not Roy," but there was no chance that she had ever heard his confession. Hell, Ike had barely heard it himself.

Gingerly, as carefully as he could, he pushed himself up and doubled over. His body screamed with every movement, but it was better, still, than lying down. Some sick sense of pride thudded in the back of his skull. He would rather die sitting up, in grave pain, than lying on his side. His eyes blinked lethargically, but took in the bright, snow-filled surroundings. Each examination made his head thud with more questions.

These were woods, yes, but they were nothing like the dead, barren wasteland that the Begnionites had turned Serenes into twenty years ago. The trees smelt of pine, and powdery snow covered it all serenely. Cold winds nicked at his face, though the cold was leaving as the blue-haired girl made a signal fire. He grimaced, wiping blood from his mouth (and noticing that his metal gauntlets were gone, replaced with once-fine gloves that had lost their fingers), and listened.

Something was wrong. Everything was unnaturally quiet, aside from his own heavy breathing and the girl's frantic attempts. No birds chirruped, no animals squeaked, not even an insect buzzed. The only thing that could mean . . . men were in the woods. The girl in crimson had mentioned a general and a priest – a warrior and a healer.

Battle was underfoot nearby, and she was making a signal fire.

The thought that she was leading an army towards them made his eyes widen in horror, and his breath halt. He lost his careful won hold over it and gasped. His mouthful smattered down onto his boots – finer leather than he would have liked to have worn. Ike clutched his sides, tighter until he had calmed to the point of easier breathing. His vision swam before him again, just as bad as before. His mind snarled out curses.

How the _hell_had he wound up here, in this situation? Where were his fellow mercenaries, where was the black muck of Serenes, where was his common clothing, and _why_was he dressed as a nobleman prepared to fight with only a bloodied rapier?

_At least I'm alive. _The thought gave him some comfort. _At least that tree didn't crush me. _Ike shut his eyes to relish in the quiet and the darkness.

Something horrible rent the air, a knife butchering the quiet mercilessly.

It was a scream, an inhuman, screeching wail that Ike had never heard before and hoped he would never hear again. He pulled his eyes apart, ignoring black spots in all his eyes laid upon, and starred skywards, at the midday sky ablaze with a wintery blue. He ignored the fact that it all spun around him from side to side, sometimes doubling or tripling.

There was shadow crossing the sky, a massive behemoth of white feathers and scales. A half-reptilian, half-avian beast dove for something far on the ground with a scream of victory in its throat. The sunlight made the creature – if it was a laguz, it was of nothing that Ike had ever seen or heard about – glitter like diamond and gold. When it disappeared from the sky, Ike felt the ground shake for a moment. It had landed close by.

"Mister Roy?"

When the girl had stoked up her magical fire, the sulfurous smell stinging the back of his throat and her crying settling down, Ike heard a squeaky voice crack right by his ear. He turned and would have jumped if he possessed the ability. Huge green eyes were inches from his face, belonging to a child of five or six, but with a red symbol on her brow just as Soren had.

"Fa!" shouted the blue-haired girl by the fire, scrambling to her feet, "Fa, do you have an elixir, or – or can you go and find General Cecilia?"

But the green-eyed girl was still starring intently at Ike's face, who looked back with blurry vision and stoicism. Was she a laguz – it would explain the tapered points of her ears, at least? Finally, Fa, which was obviously the child's name, looked up. "Miss. Lilina, where's Roy?"

"What – he's right there, Fa –"

Fa shook her head and Ike pushed himself onto his elbows so he wouldn't remain blind to the circumstances any longer. He shut his eyes, ground his teeth, and cursed just in time to hear Fa say softly, "No he's not. That's not Roy; he just has his body."

* * *

_**Disclaimer**_:

I do not own Fire Emblem, as the series is copyrighted to the good people of Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. I also do not own the opening quote; it is a belonging of the mind of sir Friedrich Nietzsche. However, I do own this story, and all original characters within it.

_**Author's Note**_:

Wow, has it really been two years since I updated? Wow.

In consolation, here's a pretty short chapter in return, with a rather out-of-character Ike and a passive aggressive Soren. That makes everything better, right?

_**Statistics**_:

(Because I know you care)

_Pages_ – 13

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_Words_ – 6,580

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_Font_ – Times New Roman

_Font Size_ – 12


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